


apoptosis

by cold_cereal



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Spencer Reid, Case Fic, False Identity, Gambler Spencer Reid, POV Jennifer "JJ" Jareau, POV Spencer Reid, Post-Season/Series 12, mentions of drug abuse, mentions of rape/non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:27:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23873149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cold_cereal/pseuds/cold_cereal
Summary: When Cat Adams and Lindsey Vaughn succeed in killing Diana Reid, Spencer takes off and doesn't tell his team where he is going. He finds himself back in Las Vegas where he begins to carve out a new life for himself under a new identity. When a series of murders brings the team to Vegas a year after his disappearance, Spencer has to reconcile with his past and deal with the consequences of his actions.
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau & Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & Original Female Character(s), Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Comments: 32
Kudos: 230





	1. fragmentation

**Author's Note:**

> I watched 68 Kill and loved Matthew’s character in the movie. This fic started as an excuse to put Spencer in Chip’s style of clothing, but eventually evolved into something more. It’s been a lot of fun writing this fic and exploring Spencer’s character. I hope he’s not too OOC; I tried to keep his personality consistent with what it was in the show, but I allowed myself some leniency. I hope you enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it. The mentions of drug use and rape don’t extend beyond what we would see in the show. No rape or drug use is described in detail. Though the events past season 12 are not mentioned directly in this fic, I do allude to JJ’s confession in Truth or Dare quite a lot.
> 
> Special thanks to my beta [redbullandcupcakebatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbullandcupcakebatter/profile).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spencer finds himself in Las Vegas, and meets Reina Cortes. JJ and the team struggle with Spencer's disappearance.

_After all, it’s one thing to run away when someone’s chasing you. It’s entirely another to be running all alone. -Jennifer E. Smith_

* * *

Spencer scrubs his hands over his face, palms scratching against the stubble he’s let grow out. He leans against the bathroom sink in his shoebox studio apartment near the Las Vegas strip. It groans under his weight, threatening to rip off the moldy wall. In the apartment above him, something shatters on the floor followed by a loud argument. Spencer shakes his head and turns on the sink, waiting for the corroded pipes to spit water into his cupped hands. He rinses his mouth out with cloudy water and when he spits, it’s colored rusty pink from blood. His split lip has finally stopped bleeding, but the cut on his cheekbone hasn’t and it stings when he touches it. With a sigh, he opens the medicine cabinet behind his mirror and pulls out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a cotton ball. He dabs the wound clean carefully and places a butterfly bandage over it. The black eye is a lost cause. It’s too late to put ice on it to diminish the bruising and even then Spencer wouldn’t want it to heal quickly anyway. The roughed up look keeps him from getting targeted by muggers when he’s walking back from the strip late at night. The only reason he was mugged tonight was because he hadn’t been paying attention. Someone had caught his eye. The woman had almost looked like JJ, and that moment of distraction cost him all the cash he had on him tonight, which luckily wasn’t much, but it meant grocery shopping had to wait.

The argument above him winds down and gives way to something more intimate. He rolls his eyes, flicks off the bathroom light, and then collapses on his mattress, which lays on the floor. He hasn’t had time to get a frame for it yet. The thumping above him ceases just as quickly as it began and Spencer spares a sympathetic thought to the girl. He rolls onto his side and pulls his sheet up under his chin. On the floor next to his mattress is his old cell phone; he removed the battery so Garcia can’t track him. A week ago he had emptied all his bank accounts and jumped ship after his mom’s funeral. He left the majority of his stuff behind in his apartment in D.C., save for a few beloved books, his mother’s scrapbook, his gun, and his badge. It was stupid to keep his badge, but it was sentimental to him. As for the gun, he didn’t want to go through the hassle of buying one in Vegas, especially since he has set it upon himself to erase all paper trails that can lead back to Spencer Reid. He knows all of Gracia’s tricks and right now, he does not want to be found. 

Before he left D.C., Spencer found a man who specializes in giving people new identities. The man gave him a Nevada driver’s license under the name Vincent Lachlin, along with a passport and a social security number. He helped him open a new credit card account and a few new bank accounts. Spencer pulled all his money out of his old accounts and slowly deposited the cash into his new accounts over the course of a week. He bought a bus ticket to Cleveland, Ohio with cash and was careful to avoid getting his face on any cameras. From there, he bought a plane ticket to Seattle, and then took another bus to Vegas. He found a cheap apartment and signed a lease as Vincent and that’s where he’s been since. Spencer has been meaning to buy a new cell phone, but keeps putting it off. He has no reason for one yet; there’s no one he wants to talk to. Right now, the only things putting him on the radar are his apartment and bank accounts, and he doesn’t need to add a cell phone into the mix so his exact location can be pinpointed. He knows the team won’t be able to find him. The name Vincent Lachlin doesn’t mean anything to Spencer or the team, and the man Spencer bought the identity from told him he was leaving the United States once he helped Spencer. It’s risky enough coming back to Las Vegas, but he knows what the team is thinking: he wouldn’t go back to his hometown so soon after his mom’s death. And normally he wouldn’t have. He has no desire to be back here. He would have much preferred to have gone to Atlantic City, but Jersey is too close to D.C.

He knows the team is undoubtedly working hard to find him. They won’t give up, not for a while. At first, they’ll think he was kidnapped, but with Scratch and Lindsey dead, and Cat in prison with seemingly no more links to the outside, there are no other suspects. There are no signs of a break in or a struggle at his apartment and the team will notice that only his most loved books and possessions are missing. They’ll realize he left of his own accord. They won’t accept it at first, but they will eventually, and they will move on. Members of the team have always come and gone. Spencer is just another name to add to the ever-growing list of former BAU team members. 

Until his team gives up, however, he has to lie low. He’ll have his work cut out for him building new connections in a city he had never planned to return to and as a new person nonetheless. But all of that can wait until tomorrow. Right now he is exhausted and sore, and his black eye is throbbing in tandem with his heartbeat. He makes sure his gun is loaded and within arm’s reach, and then curls in on himself in the dark apartment. He wishes he had left the bathroom light on; the dark feels crushing. He’s too tired to get up, though, so he squeezes his eyes shut and drifts off to sleep. His last thought is that he wishes he had brought the picture Henry had drawn of the two of them together.

* * *

Spencer’s bookshelf comes tumbling down as soon as he finishes placing his last book on it. He jumps out of the way just in time to avoid being crushed, the crash is loud and vibrates through his thin walls and floor. His next door neighbor beats on the wall they share and tells him where he’ll be putting his foot if Spencer keeps making so much noise. It’s been two weeks since Spencer moved in and he has been frequenting some bookshops in and around the city to start building his collection again. He knows that if he ever goes back to D.C. that his friends will have held onto all his things, including his books. They won’t believe he’s dead until they find a body. But until he goes back— _if_ he goes back—he needs some books to hold him over. He’s just pushed the bookshelf back up against the wall when someone knocks on his door. Cautiously, he tucks his gun into the back of his jeans, pulls his shirt over it, and opens the door. 

Spencer looks down at a woman no taller than five foot two with big hoop earrings, dark messy hair, and dark brown eyes. She’s wearing ripped skinny jeans, a loose tank top with no bra, and a flannel wrapped around her waist. Her lips are lined in a dark red lipstick and her eyes are covered in smokey makeup. Everything about her screams sullen and edgy, but then she opens her mouth and starts speaking a mile a minute. “ _Dios mío_ , what was that huge crash, dude? It sounds like you’ve got a fucking circus in here!” she tells him, trying to peer around Spencer and into his apartment. 

“Can I help you?” Spencer asks and shuts the door a little so she can’t see inside. 

“Something to hide in here? A dead hooker or something?” She wiggles her eyebrows and laughs at her own joke. “No, you can definitely pull your own, _chico_. You don’t have to pay for it.” She rakes her eyes up and down his body and Spencer feels a bit insecure, despite the weird compliment she paid him. He’d opted to forgo his usual outfit choices, instead going for something more relaxed to blend in a bit more. Right now, he’s wearing loose fitted jeans, rolled at the ankle, a dark gray v-neck, and a jean jacket over that. The black boots he bought still need breaking in and pinch his toes a little bit. He’s a far cry from who he used to be. 

“Can I _help_ you?” he repeats, trying to slide into a character he created for himself, but it feels wrong. It makes his chest tight and his fingers twitch. 

The girl rolls her eyes and sticks out her hand. “I’m Reina Cortes. I live below you in apartment 412.”

Spencer looks at her hand and thinks of all the germs crawling around on it. Prison helped a bit for his phobia, but only so much. He looks around, avoiding looking at her outstretched hand. When she realizes he’s not going to shake her hand, Reina lowers it and plays it off by tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. Spencer says, “I’m Vincent Lachlin. Sorry about the noise. It was nice meeting you, though.” 

He goes to close the door, wanting the interaction to be over as soon as possible, but Reina sticks her hand between the door and the frame, preventing him from closing it. “You never answered my question, Vince.”

“Vincent,” he corrects. The name feels wrong in his mouth. “What question?”

“What the noise was.” She crosses her arms over her chest and grins at him. “I think I have a right to know if dead hooker blood is gonna start dripping on my face while I’m sleeping tonight.”

Spencer makes a face at the thought. “I don’t have any hookers in here, dead or otherwise. And besides,” he stomps his foot on the ground, “the flooring is too thick for the blood to seep through. Water could, because it has a different viscosity, and it’s bonding properties makes the molecules stick together all in one place, which eventually would make it possible for water to leak through. But blood-”

She raises her hands. “Alright, genius, I believe you. But I still wanna know what that big crash was and if it’s gonna happen again. I get scared easily, no big man to protect me.” She juts her bottom lip out in a pout, but her tone is sarcastic from what Spencer can tell. 

“I’m surprised you subscribe to the misogynistic ideal that women can’t protect themselves and need a man to do so,” Spencer admits. Reina is small, but her confidence speaks to her character. His exposed biceps are well-defined, either through her job or a hobby. She can definitely protect herself, he has no doubt. Her eyebrows knit together at his comment, however, so he rushes to add, “My bookshelf fell over,” and opens the door to show her the mess of books scattered on the floor.

Reina slips inside the apartment under his arm before Spencer can stop her. She stands in the center of his studio apartment and Spencer once again feels self-conscious. His matters still lays on the floor; an empty cardboard box serves as his night stand with a lamp with no shade sitting on top of it; his limited wardrobe is exposed on an open PVC pipe stand he had assembled with duct tape; he has no other furniture, not even a couch or kitchen table. The kitchen, at least, is clean, but only because Spencer hasn’t been able to cook because he hasn’t gone grocery shopping. He’s just been ordering take out when he’s hungry. If Reina seems to care about the state of his apartment, though, she doesn’t show it. She’s already sitting cross-legged on the floor, going through his books. 

“ _The Nature of Space and Time, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, Psychopathology: Foundations for a Contemporary Understanding, War and Peace_. Who the hell are you?” she asks. “Don’t you have any fun books? Like, I dunno, _Twilight_?” 

Spencer starts picking up books from the floor. JJ had mentioned _Twilight_ once before on a case in Los Angeles. Gina King, a schizophrenic, who was taken advantage of by her favorite singer’s manager, Roy King, killed girls and wrote the singer’s upcoming album on their arms in blood. She kept their blood, too, and used an ice pick to simulate vampire bite marks on the victims’ necks. “That’s the one about vampires, right?”

“You’re kidding. You’ve never heard of _Twilight_?”

“I didn’t say that,” he defends. “I just haven’t read it.”

“You’re missing out then, Vinny.”

“It’s Vincent.” 

She continues like he hadn’t said anything. “It’s about a teenager named Bella who moves to Forks, Washington and falls in love with the resident vampire, Edward Cullen.”

“Sounds angsty,” he says. He walks over to his bookshelf, a few books in his arms, and inspects its integrity. It seems sturdy, so he starts placing his books on the shelves. 

“Oh, it is.” She flips through one of his books, _An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy_. 

“Is there a reason you’re in my apartment?” Spencer asks her.

“I can’t be neighborly and help you fix your bookshelf?”

“From where I’m standing, you’re sitting on the floor and judging my lack of popular fiction novels.” He bends down to pick up some more books and she tracks his movements. “Seriously, Reina, what do you want?” His skin prickles. Sometimes he misses social cues. He’s thinking he may have missed one here. 

She huffs. “You’re impossible, you know that?” She plays with her earrings thoughtfully. “Maybe I just want to get in your pants, _papi chulo_.”

Spencer blanches at the notion, and works backwards to see if her words have any verity to it. Eventually, he stutters out, “No, that’s not it. You would have made your advances more clear. And aside from showing up without a bra and sizing me up when I first opened the door, there’s been no physiological or behavioral signs of attraction. You haven’t made any attempts to touch me for no reason; your pupils didn’t dilate upon seeing me, so there was no initial attraction on your end. Your heartbeat hasn’t increased; I can tell by your carotid in your neck. So if you want me to believe that you really do want to sleep with me, you’ll have to try a little harder.” The observation falls easily from his lips, and he clamps his mouth shut in embarrassment. Usually his team is there to stop him from making an ass of himself when he doesn’t mean to. 

She stares at him. “What the fuck was that?”

He blushes dark red, his face heating up. “I’m sorry. I-”

“Are you a serial killer?”

“What? No! No, I-” He laughs a little at her suggestion. “I just know how to read people, I guess.” 

“Promise you aren’t going to kill me?” 

“Serial killers normally don’t announce who they’re going to kill, unless they have another agenda in addition to the killing. Usually politically motivated.” He pauses. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“You do have a gun on you.” Spencer’s hand flies to his lower back and he feels his gun resting there, familiar and foreign all the same. “I grew up in Eagle’s Pass. Los Zetas controls that city. I know what to look for.”

“The cartel.”

Reina taps her nose. “Good job. So, why do you have a gun?”

“I don’t have a big, strong man to protect me,” he says unthinkingly, throwing her earlier words back in her face.

Reina must decide that he’s not a threat, even with the gun, because she throws her head back and laughs, dropping the subject. Spencer is glad for it. He hates lying and he wouldn’t know how to explain why he has a gun without spinning a big lie. Truthfully, he brought the gun with him for protection, but explaining _how_ he got the gun is where the lies come into play. She interrupts his thoughts by saying, “Well, to answer your question, I just moved here, and I don’t really know anyone. So when I heard your bookshelf fall, I figured that was as good an excuse as any to come up and introduce myself.”

“What if I had been trying to hide a dead hooker?”

“I’ve never been caught up in a murder investigation, but there’s a first for everything.” Spencer doesn’t mention his own experience with murder investigations. “Are you new here, too? I’m guessing by your lack of decorations.”

“Kind of. I grew up here and just moved back.”

Reina leans back on her hands, watching as Spencer carefully places his books on his shelves just how he likes them. “Why’d you come back?”

He shrugs. Not saying anything is better than lying.

She checks her phone and swears. “My shift starts in an hour.” She stands up and brushes off her pants. “Your bookshelf is gonna fall again.”

“What? How do you know?” He looks at it. It seems stable. 

“You’ve got it standing upside down.” As soon as she says that, it topples over again and his neighbor starts pounding on the wall. Spencer stares dejectedly at the bookshelf. “See you later, V.”

“It’s Vincent!” Spencer yells, but she’s already shut the door and he can hear her cackling as she walks down the hall.

* * *

JJ had driven Spencer home after the funeral. He had watched D.C. pass him by through the window, lights blurring together into a neon streak. When JJ parked, Spencer got out and just stared at his apartment building. JJ stood beside him. “I-” he started to say, but lost his train of thought. He tried again. “She used to read to me.” JJ knew that; Spencer had told her before. He cleared his throat. “At first, she used to read to me every night before bed. It was always whatever she was teaching in her classes at the time. She was so familiar with all the works, her cadence was always perfect. And then…” He shrugged. “She started reading to me after she and my dad fought, almost like she was apologizing to me. And then my dad left. The last time she read to me was the day he left.”

William Reid had come to the funeral. It was the first time Spencer had seen him since investigating Riley Jenkins’ death. They still had nothing to say to each other. William had looked devastated and Spencer, in his anger, had confronted him. “How _dare_ you,” he seethed, grabbing his dad by the lapels of his jacket. Luke was quick to pull him off. “Why are you here?” 

William stared at Spencer, taking in his son. Even he could tell something in him had changed. “Spencer,” he said. 

“Don’t,” he hissed. “Don’t you dare.”

“I never stopped loving your mother.”

“Liar! You left!” He struggled against Luke’s arms. “Let me go! Let me go!” 

“Reid, you need to calm down,” Luke told him. 

“He doesn’t deserve to be here! He left us! _You left us_.” 

His father opened his mouth to say something, and then decided against it. “It wasn’t an easy decision for me.”

“You’re _weak_. Get out of here! Go!” Spencer demanded, finally shaking off Luke’s arms. 

Rossi had guided his dad out, and Spencer hadn’t seen him after that. 

JJ leaned against Spencer, a solid warmth on his left side. “I can stay with you tonight, if you want,” she offered. Spencer shook his head. “I don’t want you to go through this alone.”

“You need to get back to Henry and Michael,” he said.

“Will can watch them.”

“JJ-”

“Spence, let me help. Please.” She laid her hand on his arm, begging. “Don’t shut me out.”

So Spencer let her come up to his apartment. She made them grilled cheese, but it tasted like sand in Spencer’s mouth. As she cleaned up, he looked through his mom’s scrapbook, turning each page with care. JJ sat beside him, and the silence covered them like a blanket. He didn’t remember falling asleep, just waking up to JJ carding her fingers through his hair. His head had ended up in her lap. He sat up. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It’s fine,” JJ told him, eyes sincere. “It’s okay, Spencer.”

He nodded. “I’m- You can sleep in my bed. I’ll sleep out here.”

“I can take the couch. I’ll be okay.”

He was too tired to put up a fight, so he just went into his room and shut the door. He curled up in his bed, blankets tight around him, and cried. He woke up the next morning to JJ making him breakfast, and that was when he decided to leave.

Now, Spencer is in the grocery store browsing cereal options when someone bumps into him. He turns, and his breath catches in his throat. Then reality catches up to him and realizes the woman who just hit him with her cart isn’t his mom. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and turns back to the cereal selection. 

When he was younger, his mom used to take him to the store with her. She would set him in the cart and let him hold her shopping list. At three years old, he would read off the list and tell her which aisle the food was in. They would make their slow way around the store, filling the cart with food for the week. Spencer had loved their shopping trips. He loved spending time with his mom. 

And then she got worse. Spencer could remember when things started to shift in the house. His mom got more forgetful. Sometimes she’d go to the store without him and when she came back, she’d have four gallons of milk but no bread or eggs. He would come home from school and the front door would be locked and his mother nowhere in sight. He’d go to the neighbors and wait there until either his mom or his dad got home. His mom would get him up on Saturdays for school but forget to on Wednesdays. 

Spencer shakes his head and adds Cheerios to his cart. 

The funeral had been a somber affair, as most are. Lindsey’s bomb had gone off as soon as the team had pulled up outside the house. Some people call it pink mist, the blood and flesh that hangs in the air after a person is blown up. There hadn’t been anything viable left of his mom to bury, so Spencer buried an empty casket. He didn’t even get to say goodbye. 

“Buddy, move,” someone yells, and Spencer jolts in the middle of the aisle. He shuffles off to the side to allow the man through, ignoring his glare. His shopping cart is nearly empty, and Spencer is suddenly very tired. He leaves the grocery store without buying anything and goes to bed hungry.

* * *

Spencer steps into the crowded casino and heads over to the booth to trade in his cash for chips. It smells like booze, cigar smoke, and body odor. The sound of clanking slot machines and uproarious cheering drowns everything else out. The casino is already filled to bursting with high rollers, tourists, locals, and prostitutes. Spencer collects his five hundred dollars worth of chips and decides to head over to the Blackjack table first. He squeezes between people, avoiding contact as much as he can, before finally finding an open seat at one of the tables. He sits down right as the dealer is cutting the deck and places one fifty dollar chip down for his first bet. 

Spencer watches the game closely. He uses a high-low strategy to count cards in Blackjack. By keeping track of the running count of cards, he can wager appropriate bets based on what’s left in the deck. Once all the players and the dealer have their first two cards, Spencer calculates the running count to be plus one. His own first cards are two tens, so he tells the dealer to split and adds another fifty dollar chip to his bet. On the card on his right he get’s a six, bringing the running count to plus two. Anything above a five would be a bust, but his stakes are good, and the dealer has to keep hitting until he gets a seventeen or higher, so Spencer hits. He gets a two, bringing his total to eighteen, and he stands. The running count goes to plus three. On the left, he gets another ten, bringing that total to twenty and the running count back to plus two. He stands. The rest of the players take their turns, and the dealer busts at twenty-two. Spencer is up two hundred dollars already. He keeps track of the running count and constantly converts it to a true count by dividing it by the number of decks left. He bets appropriately based on his calculations, and leaves the table about half an hour later seven hundred dollars richer. 

He holds his chips close to him and scans the casino for a poker table. When he finds one, he’s quick to take the open seat. He only plays a few rounds, careful not to draw too much attention to himself. He’s already been banned from every casino in Vegas as Spencer Reid; there’s no need to repeat that as Vincent Lachlin. After about two hours at the table, Spencer decides to tap out. He’s exhausted by the pure volume of people in the casino, and the smells are starting to overwhelm him. He leaves with three thousand dollars and stuffs the envelope into his jean jacket. 

Despite it being late May, the air has a bit of a chill to it when he walks out of the casino around midnight. Spencer hugs his jacket tighter to himself, both to protect against the wind and to guard his cash. He doesn’t want to get robbed tonight and walking the back streets to his apartment is a high risk, especially alone. He knows he doesn’t look intimidating. He’s as thin as a beanstalk and still not comfortable in his new clothes. He feels like he sticks out like a sore thumb everywhere he goes. 

He makes it back to his apartment unscathed. He’ll stop by the bank tomorrow to deposit his cash and maybe keep about two hundred to finally go grocery shopping. A post-it note on his door catches his eye, and after unlocking his apartment, he peels it off and steps inside to read it.

_Knocked earlier and you were out. Don’t know when you’ll be back, but I’m getting enough Chinese food for two and will be up pretty late. -R_

Spencer considers the note. He is pretty hungry and there is nothing in his fridge. Going back out to get fast food doesn’t sound appealing and most delivery places are closed. On the other hand, making friends isn’t on his agenda. In all honesty, he doesn’t know what he had set out to do when he left D.C. He just knows he doesn’t want to be found. He’s never gone without a plan before and his mind is muddled. It almost feels like when he had been drugged, high on heroin and cocaine in that Mexican holding cell with no idea what had happened or who he was. 

He presses the heels of hands into his eye sockets until he sees stars. He lets out a frustrated groan. He doesn’t know what he wants to do. He wants to go back out and find a dealer, someone who can get him some dilaudid. He doesn’t want to feel anything right now and he knows how to make that happen. Finding drugs in Vegas wouldn’t be hard. In fact, Spencer already has four different plans swimming in his mind, each with the same outcome: a needle in his arm and the blissful numbness that follows. His hands shake.

Spencer notices he has crumpled the bright pink note in his hand and quickly unclenches his fist. He smooths it out on the kitchen countertop and then searches for the roll of scotch tape he knows he has. He tapes the sticky note to his fridge, right in the center. He stares at it for a minute before grabbing his keys and heading down to apartment 412. 

Despite it being nearly one in the morning when Spencer knocks on Reina’s door, she’s quick to answer. “Vince! I figured no one can fight the allure of free food. Come in.” 

“It’s Vincent,” Spencer says, stepping into her apartment. It smells like greasy food and oddly enough, cinnamon. There’s a movie paused on the TV Reina has on her back wall under her windows. Cartons of Chinese food litter her kitchen countertops. She hands him a paper plate and some chopsticks. 

“Help yourself,” she tells him. 

He piles his plate high with rice, lo mein, and chicken and then drizzles soy sauce over it all. He stares at the chopsticks. “Do you have a fork?” 

Reina pokes her head over the couch. “A fork?”

“I… I’m not very good at using chopsticks,” he admits. 

She grins. “Little white boy can’t figure them out?”

“Experts credit Confucius with the advent of chopsticks. He equated knives with acts of aggression. But, no. I can’t figure them out.” He frowns at his plate. “It seems like the hardest way to eat rice, and yet nearly one billion people use chopsticks on a daily basis.”

“And you’re not part of that one billion, huh, _chico_?” she teases. “Forks are in the drawer closest to the fridge.” 

Spencer grabs one and then sits down at the small table Reina has pushed in the corner by her kitchen. “Thank you for this.”

“Yeah, of course. The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

He pauses. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

She snorts. “I want to be your friend, Vincent.”

“I don’t hear that too often. People think I’m a know-it-all.” His leg bounces under the table, and he forces it to stay still. His body is thrumming, the ache for dilaudid stronger than it has been in a long time. 

“You do seem full of useless knowledge.”

“I don’t think any knowledge is useless. Shakespeare said that knowledge is the wing we use to fly to heaven.” He twirls his fork around the lo mein. 

“You believe in heaven?”

“Not necessarily. I like to have proof of things existing to believe in them. No one can really prove heaven exists. I want to believe there’s an afterlife, but I’m not sure that it’s the heaven Christianity and similar religions preach about.” He thinks about his mom for a moment, before forcing the thought aside. 

“I believe in it,” Reina says, coming to sit with him at the table. She pulls her legs up onto the chair and rests her chin on her knees. “I want to believe my brother is there.”

“Your brother died?”

“Last year. Coke overdose.” She nods at him, where his hand is shaking as he brings his fork to his mouth. “What was your vice?”

Spencer swallows. “Um, dilaudid. How did-”

“I learned to recognize the signs. I have three brothers. Two got addicted to coke and one died from it. The other still craves it, and when he does he shakes. You’ve also got this longing look on your face which can mean one of two things: you miss someone you love, or you’re craving something you can’t have. Most people don’t get so twitchy when they’re missing someone.”

He blinks. 

“You’re not the only one who can read people,” she says. “Isaac smokes cigarettes now to deal with his cravings.”

Spencer pushes the remaining rice around on his plate. “Are you telling me I should start smoking?”

She shrugs. “I’d rather see you smoking than shooting up. And you can’t get arrested for possession of tobacco. It’s a vice, but a more socially acceptable one.” She takes his plate and throws it away. “I was watching _Shawshank Redemption_. You wanna join?”

“I haven’t seen it.”

Reina stares at him. “Get on the couch. I’m popping some popcorn and we’re starting this movie over.”

“But-”

“No. This is required. Up, go!” She shoos him out of his seat and towards the couch. Spencer moves and settles in, leaning against the arm rest. “Grab the remote and rewind the movie. I was only like, fifteen minutes in.” He does as she says while she makes the popcorn. 

When she comes back over and shoves the bowl into his hands, he takes it. This could be good, he thinks as the movie starts. Reina could be good. He shoves popcorn in his mouth and offers the bowl to Reina, who takes a handful, eyes fixated on the screen. He smiles.

* * *

JJ stares at Spencer’s empty desk. His books still line the barrier between their desks as they always have. She knows that if she opens his drawers, she’ll find a deck of cards and some handkerchiefs, ready to show the boys some magic tricks whenever she brings them in. There’ll be the remnants of one of his little science experiments that make small bottle rockets jump in the air. There will be some medical journals in there, probably on schizophrenia and dementia, as well as some other science journals on god knows what. She’s so focused on what she would find in Spencer’s desk that she doesn’t realize Emily has been calling her name for the past two minutes.

“JJ!” Emily shouts, finally loud enough to break through the haze of her thoughts. 

JJ jumps and shakes her head. “Sorry.”

“We have a case.”

She nods and stands up to head to the round table. There is noticeably one empty seat and everyone refuses to look at it. 

“Before we begin, I’m going to address the elephant in the room,” Emily announces, looking at each of them in turn. “I know we are all worried about Reid. I am, too, but it’s been two weeks and the trail is cold. Garcia is running a program that will alert us if his credit or debit cards get used or if his phone turns on. Barring any other evidence, we are going to operate on the assumption that Spencer left of his own volition. He’s an adult and he can take care of himself. I know we all want to be there for him and help him, but that obviously isn’t what he wants right now. We need to focus on this case because we know there are people being hurt and we can help them. Is anyone going to have any trouble working this case?”

No one speaks up, but JJ wants to stand up and leave. She wants to stay in Quantico and keep looking for Spencer. She stays in her seat.

Emily nods. “Good. Garcia?”

Garcia stands up and pushes her glasses up her nose. “You’re going to Clearwater, Florida, where our unsub has been raping and multilating freshman girls at the local community college.” 

JJ puts all her energy into focusing on the case, but in the back of her mind a loud voice keeps screaming at her to look for Spencer. She silences it as best she can, because Emily is right: these girls need her full attention. She has to trust that Spencer is okay, wherever he is.

* * *

Spencer is juggling his groceries and trying to fish his keys out of his pocket when Reina appears behind him. “Hey, V.”

“It’s Vincent,” he chides, but knows it’s a lost cause.

She ignores him. “You went grocery shopping. Good. You can make me dinner tonight.”

Spencer glances over at her, dropping his keys in the process. She grabs them off the ground. “I’m not a very good cook.”

Reina unlocks his door and lets herself in, dropping his keys on the counter and leaving him to continue to struggle with his groceries. “Fine, you coerced me. You can buy me dinner tonight.”

He places his bags on the counter with a huff and watches as Reina walks over to his bookshelf and runs her fingers over the spines of his books. “Thank you for getting me food the other night.”

“Of course. That’s what friends do. So what’re we doing tonight?”

“Huh?” Spencer wonders if he just constantly misses social cues with Reina, or if her thought process is so all over the place that he can’t even hope to follow it. 

She rolls her eyes. “It’s one of my rare days off and I want to spend it with my new best friend.”

“It’s best friend now?” He’s really not used to people outside the BAU actually wanting to spend time with him. 

“By default. You’re my only friend right now. And from the lack of personal photos, I’m guessing I’m your only one right now, too.” 

Spencer bristles. “I have friends. And what about your brothers? Siblings are usually friends.”

Reina pauses in her inspection of his bookshelf. “You’ve got it right side up this time. And I’m sure you have friends. You just don’t have friends _here_. And yeah, I’m friends with my brothers. But they’re not here.”

“How would you know I don’t have friends here?” She’s right, but he crosses his arms over his chest in defiance.

“I live below you, Vince, and-”

“Vincent.”

“-And I only ever hear one set of footsteps. You never have anyone over,” she says. 

“Maybe I do when you’re at work,” Spencer counters weakly.

“I doubt that.” She doesn’t sound malicious, and he relaxes a little.

“Are you spying on me?”

She puts her hand over her heart and gasps. “How dare you! I’m merely keeping tabs on my best friend.”

“You’re using that word again.”

“Just roll with it, Vinny.”

“ _Vincent_ ,” he corrects. It’s reminiscent of Gideon correcting Hotch during Spencer’s first year in the BAU. Hotch would always introduce Spencer as Agent Reid and Gideon would glide by and say, “ _Doctor_ Reid.” His chest aches at the memory. 

She walks over to his fridge and grins at the pink post-it taped to the door. “This just confirms that we are best friends.”

Spencer feels himself blush. “Whatever you say.” He finishes putting away his groceries and stuffs the extra plastic bags under his kitchen sink. “Where do you work?”

“A mechanic shop on the outskirts of town. When guys aren’t busy trying to oogle me in my formless jumpsuit or trying to tell me how to do my job, it’s pretty okay. My brothers, Isaac and Xavier, taught me everything I know. You have a job?”

He shrugs. “Kind of.”

“Oh, intriguing. Are you a pimp?”

He makes a face.

Reina waves her hand. “Yeah, you’re right. You drink too much of that respect women juice to be a pimp.”

Spencer isn’t sure he heard her right. “What are you talking about?”

“Huh?” she grunts, hoisting herself up to sit on his counter. She swings her legs in the air like a little kid. 

“What’s respect women juice?”

“You know, the meme.”

“The meme?”

“You know what a meme is, right?”

He shakes his head. 

“What the fuck? It’s like…” She tilts her head to the side, thinking. “You know, Internet memes.”

“I don’t browse the Internet too often.”

“Come on. You must have some social media. Even Facebook has memes. Not great ones. I like the ones on Twitter.”

“I don’t have any social media,” he tells her. He’s never seen the appeal of posting his whole life online for the world to see. If people want to know how he’s doing, they can ask him. 

“That’s why I couldn’t find you anywhere. Not even a Facebook? Myspace?” She giggles like she’s told a good joke. Spencer doesn’t get it.

“Nothing.” 

“Okay, so how ‘bout a phone number? That way I don’t have to leave post-its on your door, even though you seem to enjoy them.” Reina grins at him and Spencer feels the blood rush to his cheeks again. 

“I don’t have a phone,” he says.

“I call bullshit.”

He frowns. “Okay, I have a phone, but it’s broken.” That’s not entirely a lie, but it still makes his stomach roll. 

“So let’s go get you a new one.” She hops off the counter and grabs her own keys. “Wait, can you afford one?”

“I can, but I don’t want to get a new phone. I don’t need one.”

“Yes, you do. I just told you that you do. I need to text you and annoy you. That’s what best friends do.”

Spencer can’t air his concerns about getting a new phone to Reina. He can’t tell her there’s people looking for him and getting a phone, even one in a fake name, will just make it easier for him to be found. From the little he knows about Reina, however, he knows she won’t give up on this. She _wants_ to talk to him and having a phone will make it easier for her to. She’s trying to build an extended family out here in Vegas, and Spencer is a part of that for her. She needs a support system just as much as Spencer does, because as much as he’d like to be alone, he knows that all his emotions are going to catch up to him eventually and he’ll need someone to have his back; someone like Reina. Despite having interacted all of two times before this, he likes her. He does want to be her friend and she wants to be his. Whether she’ll still want to be if she finds out who he really is remains to be seen, but Spencer plans on hiding his true past for as long as he can. Until then, he can buy a new phone so his best friend can annoy him at all hours.

“Okay. Let’s go buy a new phone.”

* * *

JJ looks out the window at the setting sun in Clearwater, Florida. She and Tara stayed in the precinct to help field any tips coming into the police station while the rest of the team went to interview some of the girls’ friends. The air is thick and muggy and pushes in on everything, making even the walls sweat in the precinct. She fans herself with a case file while she stares at the evidence board. Nothing connects any of the victims yet. They all have different appearances, which means they aren’t a surrogate for anyone. 

Tara lets out a groan. “God, how much you wanna bet there’s something super obscure connecting these girls that only Reid could figure out?” She flips through crime scene photos before discarding them on the table. 

JJ remembers Morgan telling her about Henry Grace, the serial killer who killed girls based on the proportions of their face. Naturally, Spencer was the one to make that connection. She’s beginning to realize just how much the team relies on Spencer for his obscure knowledge. “I guess we took him for granted,” she mumbles. “Okay, so all the girls go to the same community college, but beyond that… Nothing. Their majors don’t overlap; only two of them shared a class. They don’t have the same hobbies. How are these four girls connected?”

“Maybe they all have the same advisor?” Tara suggests. 

“No, Matt read through all their academic files. He didn’t see anything like that.” She frowns at the pictures of the girls on the evidence board. “Maybe these girls are completely random.” 

“I don’t know. Something tells me they are connected. These kills—they’re too well thought out. Our guy planned this.”

JJ rests her head on the table, a cool respite from the sticky air. “I’ve got nothing.”

“Neither do I,” Tara says and rubs at her eyes. When her phone rings, she answers with, “Lewis. Yeah, hold on; I’m with JJ. I’ll put you on speaker.” JJ looks up. “Okay, go ahead.”

“Jayje, everyone’s on,” Garcia says. “Okay, listen to this. I kept combing through these girls’ social media accounts. I mean, these are young girls. Their lives are meticulously documented online. Anyway, after some, uh, _deeper_ looking, I found all these girls had deleted posts so I found out what they were. It turns out that this guy, Kyle Etchner, dated all of them. At the same time.” 

“Did they find out?” Luke asks.

“It seems like it. Grace Dimmend made a post about him being a cheating asshole, but eventually took it down,” Garcia answers.

“So he’s tracking down his ex-girlfriends,” Tara says.

“Are there any other girls?” JJ asks. 

“They had a groupchat, all the girls, once they found out Kyle was cheating. It looks like there is one more girl, Whitney Iker.”

“Address, Garcia,” Emily says.

“Sent!”

“Tara, JJ, start heading over. The rest of us will follow. We need to get Whitney into protective custody before Kyle gets to her.”

As JJ pulls on her bullet proof vest and makes sure her gun is loaded, her mind wanders back to Spencer. Could this case have been solved quicker with him, or would it have progressed in the same way? She frowns as Tara speeds down the highway towards Whitney Iker’s house. She wonders if the team will be able to adjust to Spencer’s absence long term. Before, it was easy to consult with him when he was visiting his mom, and when he was in prison they didn’t take on as many cases, opting to work on getting Spencer out instead. Now, they have no way of contacting him. 

She pushes the thoughts from her mind when Tara pulls the car to a stop in front of Whitney’s house. Only time will tell. She can’t spend time pondering the what-ifs. So she pulls out her gun, and does what she can: save Whitney Iker before she meets the same fate the other girls did.

* * *

Spencer stares at the phone in his hand, turning it left and right. Reina sits across from him in the Mediterranean restaurant, a silly grin on her face. “You can turn it on, you know.”

“I’m not sure how,” he admits, setting the phone down carefully on the table. The glass looks so fragile even in the case he bought for the phone.

Reina laughs, but at the look on Spencer’s face she says, “You’re serious.”

He rubs his hands over his face. “I don’t _like_ technology. I’ve never owned a smartphone. I only had a phone because-” He stops, not wanting to tell her he only had a phone because of his job, his friends, and his mom. And now he has none of those. 

Reina, to her credit, doesn’t pry. “Press and hold the button on the right. You can let go when the screen lights up.”

He does as she says and the screen lights up white. He sets it back down on the table. “iPhones don’t necessarily have glowing reviews,” he tells her. “Why did you insist on it?”

“Because I have an iPhone and I refuse to text someone with green bubbles.” At his confused look, she adds, “Sorry. I forgot you’re not familiar with this kind of thing. When you text someone on an iPhone, the outgoing messages are either blue or green. They’re blue if the other person also has an iPhone and green if they have some other kind of phone.”

He nods as the screen on his phone changes. “What now?” he asks.

“Follow the prompts,” she instructs and flags down their waiter to ask for the check. “You owe me a meal, _viejo_.”

The phone asks him to rest his thumb on the home button so it can scan his fingerprint. “Do I have to put my thumbprint in here?”

“No, you can skip it. Why? Is the government after you?” she teases.

_Close_ , Spencer thinks. Instead, he says, “Don’t wanna be connected to that dead hooker you found me with earlier.”

She laughs, head tossed back. “You’re funny, V.”

Spencer allows himself a small smile. Funny normally isn’t the first word people use to describe him. Usually, it’s genius, followed by socially-inept. He enters a passcode: Henry’s birthday. “It’s Vincent. Are you ever gonna use my real name?”

“Nope, “ Reina says, popping the p. “No fun in that. Besides, my new best friend needs a nickname. I just haven’t decided on one yet. What’s your middle name? Maybe I can work with that instead.”

The phone prompts him to select a background. The Earth looks cool, so he picks that. “I don’t have one.”

“White people are boring,” she huffs. The waiter comes back with their bill and Spencer pulls his wallet out. He drops thirty-five dollars on the table despite their meals only costing twenty-five altogether. “Hefty tip,” Reina comments.

“He was a good waiter. I’m not gonna stiff him.”

“You’re a good man, Vince.”

“Vincent,” he says futilely. He hands her his phone. “Put your number in.” 

“You really know how to treat a girl, _güero_.” She takes his phone and does as he asked. When she hands it back over, hers buzzes. “And now I have your number, too. What do you do for work? Just so I know you won’t get in trouble for me blowing up your phone when I’m bored.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Oh, god. Are you actually a pimp? That would explain the gun.”

“Keep your voice down,” Spencer hisses. “I’m not a pimp. I’m…” Honesty would be his best bet here, and it’s not like Reina would actually care. “I’m sort of a professional gambler.”

“That’s not a real thing.”

“Are you ready to go?” he asks, pulling on his jean jacket. He’s actually grown quite fond of the jacket. It’s nothing like what he used to wear, but comfortable nonetheless. He wonders what the team would think if they saw him now. He still wonders what they thought when they saw him in that jail cell in Mexico, dressed in jeans, a flannel, boots, and a hat, but he was too strung out to remember anything. 

Reina pulls on her leather jacket as well. “Is that a real thing?”

“Kind of. I don’t have an actual job yet and I’m decent at gambling, so I go down to the casinos a few times a week and make my money that way.”

“That’s scary as hell, _amigo_. What if you lose? You can’t get your money back.”

“I don’t lose,” he says casually, beginning to walk in the direction of their building. He pulls out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. “It’s all math.”

“Are you actually a genius or something? And I see you took my advice with the cigarettes.”

“I don’t think intelligence can be accurately quantified but I do have an IQ of 187 and I can read 20,000 words per minute, so by textbook definition, yes. And yeah, I did.” He lights the cigarette and inhales, choking a bit on the hot smoke. 

Reina punches his shoulder, hard.

“Ow!” he yelps, rubbing where she hit him. “What was that for?”

“Making sure you’re real. You’re joking, right?” She sighs. “No, you’re not, I saw your bookshelf. Why aren’t you teaching Calculus at Harvard or something?”

“I wasn’t a fan of Harvard’s campus.”

She glares at him. “You went to _Harvard_?”

“No, Caltech.”

“That’s basically an Ivy League school. What’re you doing gambling in Las Vegas?”

He takes a drag from his cigarette. “It’s complicated.”

“Lotta things are complicated with you.”

“That happens when you’re hiding from something.”

She glances over at him, but then looks straight ahead. “What’re you hiding from?”

He hesitates. “I was in federal prison for a little bit under false charges. I was released after a few months, but…” He shrugs. “I couldn’t stay in D.C. after my sentence. What about you? What’re you hiding from?”

“Who says I’m hiding from something?” she defends, crossing her arms over her chest. 

Spencer ducks under the awning of a closed restaurant to dump the butt of his cigarette in an ash urn. “Takes one to know one.”

Reina huffs. “I dropped out of college to take care of my brothers when their addictions got really bad. When Daniel died… I felt like it was my fault. I stayed until Isaac made it to a year sober and then I left. I couldn’t- I can’t stay in the city that forced that addiction on my brothers.” She shoves her hands deep in her pockets. “So you’re a genius professional gambler.”

Spencer accepts the subject change. “I am.”

“And I’m a Latina car mechanic.”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like the set-up to a bad joke.”

“Or an awesome superhero duo,” Spencer says, grinning. 

“I like that better.” She loops her arm through Spencer’s and he finds he’s not averse to the contact. “Take me home, sidekick.”

“ _I’m_ the sidekick?”

“Of course you are. You’re the brains, Vinny, and I’m the brawn.”

“I think I like Vince more than Vinny.”

“I thought it was Vincent?”

“It is.”

“Sure it is, Vince.” They exchange a smile at the inside joke. Friends are good, Spencer thinks, and Reina is a good friend. Not a replacement for his team, but one all her own.

* * *

JJ brushes Michael’s hair back from his forehead and then kisses him goodnight. Will’s waiting for her in the hallway and doesn’t speak until she closes their son’s door softly. “How was the case?”

“It was fine,” JJ says, letting him take her into his arms. 

“It was your first without Reid,” he notes. He rubs her back, soothing. 

“I know.”

“Are you okay?” His hand goes up and back down steadily.

JJ doesn’t know how to answer that. She wants to tell Will she’s fine, but both of them would know that’s a lie. But saying no… That also isn’t right. It feels like when she’s been underwater for just a second too long. When she’s so close to breaching the surface of a pool, but it feels like she won’t make it, and her lungs burn and she can’t breathe. It’s that aching feeling in her chest and the paralyzing fear in the back of her mind that she’s too late, that she stayed under too long, and now all she can do is wait to drown. She doesn’t have a word for that feeling. Spencer would. He would be able to give her something to describe it. But he isn’t here and if he was, JJ wouldn’t need a word for what she’s feeling because she wouldn’t be feeling it. So the best she can tell Will is, “No. No, I’m not okay.” 

She buries her face in Will’s neck and lets it all go. She cries and her body shakes with the sobs. She clutches Will tighter and breathes in his familiar scent: aftershave, pine, and a little bit of salty ocean air. He just holds her, one hand rubbing her back, the other cradling her head. He begins to sway from side to side, the way he does when Michael is fussing or when Henry has been hurt. It helps her now, too, the same way it does the boys. When she’s calmed down enough, Will holds her face in his hands, thumbs wiping away her tears. “JJ,” he whispers, planting a kiss on her forehead. He doesn’t say anything else, but she understands. 

“I don’t know where he would have gone,” she says, voice cracking. “Or why he would have left.” Softer, almost inaudible, she whispers, “Why would he leave?”

“You’re gonna run yourself into the ground trying to answer that, Jayje. Only Reid can tell you why he did what he did.”

“But if I can figure out why our unsubs do what they do, why can’t I figure this out? I should be able to; all of us should be able to. We just need to think like Spencer.”

Will lets out a dry chuckle. “I don’t know anyone who can think like Reid, hon. His mind works in ways I can’t even begin to comprehend. And he knows how y’all think. He knows all of your tricks.”

“I know!” JJ shouts, angry suddenly. She moves out of Will’s arms. “You think I don’t know that? I just can’t stand feeling so damn helpless!”

“Shh,” Will shushes, but from behind him JJ hears a little voice call for her. 

“Mommy?”

“Henry, buddy, hey,” JJ says, dropping down to Henry’s level. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

He rubs his eyes and blinks at her. “Are you okay?”

She feels like crying again. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay, buddy. I just miss Spencer.”

“When will Uncle Spencer be back?”

JJ doesn’t have a good answer for that. “Hopefully soon, Henry. Let’s get you back to bed.” She looks back at Will as she leads Henry to his room, and the look on his face tells her that their conversation is far from over. She sighs and gives in easily when Henry asks her to read him a story.

* * *

Spencer lays back on his mattress and stares up at the ceiling without really seeing it. The people above him are fighting again and the neighbor to his right is playing his radio just a little too loud. In a way, it’s not that much different from prison. It was never quiet there, even at night. There were always people muttering in their sleep, or snoring, or even shouting across cell blocks. He was never alone. It’s been a very long time since Spencer has been anywhere truly quiet, and he’s afraid of where his mind will go if he’s awarded even a few moments of peace. So really, the noisy neighbors are a blessing in disguise. He turns over onto his side, opting to stare at the wall instead of the ceiling. He uses his thumbnail to pick at a piece of peeling paint. 

His thoughts inevitably drift to his mother. He keeps asking himself if there was anything he could have done differently. Maybe if he had left her in that facility in Houston instead of bringing her back to D.C. it would have been harder for Lindsey and Cat to get to her. If he had never mentioned his mother to Cat in the first place, his mom may have never made it onto her radar. Spencer frowns. Cat would have found some way to fuck up Spencer’s life. If it wasn’t his mom, it would have been someone else. It could have been JJ, or even Henry or Michael. He can’t change the past and pondering over what ifs doesn’t do him any good. Diana Reid is dead. She was dead before Spencer could do anything about it. He never got to say goodbye.

He remembers when his mom came to visit him in prison. Spencer had never wanted her to see him like that, but when he saw her he felt all the tension drain out of his body. His mom was safe. She was okay. She didn’t realize at first where she was, didn’t realize he was locked away. He had told her it was going to be okay. And then she blamed herself. He had been quick to reassure her that the same thing would have happened, just a little later. He repeats that to himself now. “The same thing would have happened. It just would have taken longer,” he mumbles. He picks off pieces of chipping paint and lets them flutter down to the floor. 

His mom was worried that she was losing him. She told him she was starting to make peace with the Alzheimer’s, but she couldn’t come to terms with leaving him in a prison cell, locked away for a crime he didn’t commit. He told her he was going to get out and that his name would be cleared. His mom had looked at him, eyes clear for the first time Spencer had seen them in months, and said, “There isn’t time. Pretty soon I won’t even remember you’re my son anymore.” 

He had told her love isn’t a memory, but memories are all Spencer has left of her. There wasn’t even a body to bury. 

There really isn’t anything Spencer could have done differently. Cat would have found a way in. It was only a matter of time. He should have killed her in that interrogation room. He would have if JJ hadn’t been there to stop him and if Cat hadn’t been pregnant. But Cat was right: there was a very small part of Spencer that had enjoyed poisoning those prisoners with their own supply. He and Cat aren’t that different. He had enjoyed the feeling of his own hands wrapped around her neck, her life literally in his hands. He could have crushed her windpipe so easily. He would have had a front row seat to watch as the light left her eyes. His mom was already dead, so it wouldn’t have mattered. But Spencer hadn’t known that. Cat had won, but she would never hear Spencer admit how much he had enjoyed nearly killing her. It was a secret he would take with him to the grave. 

Spencer turns around restlessly to stare back up at the ceiling. Scientifically, he’s unsure if there is an afterlife. Emotionally, he wants to believe there is one, a place he can one day be reunited with his mom. How else could he explain what he saw when he died in that cabin in Georgia? All he had seen were floating figures, shadows against bright light. Had he been in a hospital dying, he could have rationalized what he saw. The figures could have doctors or nurses and his stress-muddled brain was just trying to comprehend what was happening, to make sense of what it couldn’t. But the only person there when he was dying was Tobias Hankel. So what had Spencer seen? An afterlife, surely, a place people go when their bodies die. That brings up the idea of good and evil. 

In Christianity, there are three places people can go: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. In Judaism, there’s only one place: Sheol. Hindus believe in Reincarnation. The ancient Greeks believed in the Underworld. Across all cultures and religions, however, is the concept of good and evil. The concept is uniquely human. Animals don’t believe in good and evil or right or wrong. Spencer has argued over good and evil several times. He has a B.A. in philosophy for god’s sake. He’s worked with serial killers. So what makes a person inherently evil? Is it their actions or their intentions?

Spencer never once went into work with the intention to kill. Even walking into that interrogation room with Cat, _knowing_ she had his mother, he didn’t think he was going to end up trying to kill her. Only in the moment he had his hands locked around her throat did he believe he was going to. But never a second before that. The fact remains, however, that at one point he did intend to kill her. Does that make him inherently evil? Had he not worked for the BAU, would he have eventually become a serial killer they would hunt?

Douglas Preston had once said, “We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.” Would Spencer’s monster have festered and grown into something uncontrollable without the BAU, or would it have never been detected at all? Did the BAU make Spencer evil, or stop him from becoming a monster? If he stayed, would he have eventually killed another unsub and then developed a taste for it, after finally admitting that he had enjoyed poisoning those people and choking Cat? There’s no way of knowing, but staying with his team and risking it was not worth it. He couldn’t sit in the office and chase the monsters he could eventually become. He couldn’t make his team—his family—eventually turn their eyes on him and have to decide to either put him down or back in a box. 

There’s a biological term for cells that voluntarily kill themselves to save the whole organism. It’s called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. It’s a way to prevent cancer and other diseases that can develop from the duplication of damaged cells. During the cell cycle, there are checkpoints and at each checkpoint there is a decision to be made: continue through mitosis and eventually split into two identical daughter cells, it can repair itself if it’s damaged, or it can die. Most of the time, cells go through the mitosis without incident. DNA is copied correctly with few mutations, some mutated DNA can be repaired, and the cell finishes mitosis without incident. Sometimes, though, the damage is too great to be fixed. The checkpoints during the cell cycle are meant to catch those mistakes, but if the enzymes responsible for fixing the mistakes are damaged? Those mutated cells can go on to replicate and eventually turn into cancer. The organism dies, all because one cell went and fucked it all up.

Spencer refuses to be that damaged cell. He won’t destroy his family. The team, however, will feel his loss in the way the human body doesn’t when a cell goes through apoptosis. The average human loses between fifty and seventy _billion_ cells a day to programmed cell death, and humans are none the wiser. Spencer’s organism—his family—they know. They feel his loss. He won’t kid himself on that front. He knows his family is hurting. As much as it kills him to leave them, he knows he had to. He couldn’t stay. Everything hurts too much, and he doesn’t want to snap. Not around his family. It’s better this way. It would be selfish of a cell to keep living when it knows it could eventually kill the organism. It would be selfish of Spencer to stay when he knows he will eventually tear the team apart.

So, like a cell, Spencer waits for bits of him to break off and be devoured by the world.

* * *

The first bit breaks off when Spencer’s been in Vegas for two months. He’s arriving at a casino near his apartment ready to make enough money to buy some groceries, when a street conman stops him. “Hey, buddy!” the conman calls. “Come play a game with me, maybe win a few bucks to start the night off right.”

Spencer hovers by the entrance to the casino, considering, before going to sit in front of the conman’s little cardboard box set up against his better judgement. The sleazeball grins. Spencer decides to play dumb. “How do I play?”

“It’s very easy. I’ve got three cards here, two black, one red. You just need to follow the red one once I flip them all over. Let’s start with a small bet, yeah? Five dollars sound good to you?” If the conman had a mustache, he would be twirling it. 

“Yeah, I’ll give it a go,” Spencer says and pulls a five from his wallet. The conman places a five of his own on the box next to the cards. 

He flips each card over, showing Spencer that the red eight of diamonds is in the center, flanked by a black two of clubs and a black ten of spades. Spencer nods at the conman and watches as he flips the cards face down and begins to shuffle them around. He keeps it easy for the first round to lure Spencer into a false sense of confidence. A small crowd has gathered around them, eager to see Spencer get played. When the man is done shuffling the cards, he gestures to them. “Where’s the red card?”

Spencer points to the card on his left. The conman flips it over to reveal the red eight of diamonds. 

“Got me that round, pal,” he says. “How ‘bout we go again and raise the stakes a little? Let’s say I raise you another ten. Same game, same rules.”

“I’ll give it another shot.”

The conman makes the round easy again, letting Spencer win. “I must be off my game tonight, or you’re just real good at this. How ‘bout we bet fifty?”

Spencer adds thirty-five dollars to the pot and the conman does the same. Spencer knows he won’t let him win this time, not with a hundred bucks on the table. He watches the conman do a sleight-of-hand, sliding the red card up his sleeve and replacing it with another card. He chuckles when Spencer chooses the wrong card. “How about we each add another fifty?” Spencer suggests. With two hundred on the table, he knows this will be the last round. 

He sees the conman swap the cards back out, so there’s once again two black cards and one red. He shows Spencer where they are and then flips them over facedown. Spencer watches closely. About ten seconds into the shuffling, the conman slips the red card up his sleeve and replaces it with another black card. He keeps watching, keeping track of where the red card would be if the man hadn’t switched it out. The conman finishes shuffling with a flourish and asks with a knowing grin on his face, “Where’s the red card?”

Spencer smiles at the conman and while he points to where he knows the red card should be, he slides the two hundred dollars off the box and into his lap. The conman doesn’t notice and flips the card over to reveal that it’s a black card. “Oh, sorry,” Spencer says, “Did I point to that one?” He grabs the conman’s arm before he can react and pulls the red eight of diamonds out of his jacket sleeve. “Nice try.”

The conman begins to protest, hand shooting out to grab the money he still hasn’t realized Spencer has already swiped. The crowd around them is murmuring, knowing a fight will ensue. “Hey, buddy! Gimme my cash!”

“You mean the money you didn’t earn because you cheated?” Spencer asks, standing up. He brushes off the back of his jeans and tucks the two hundred dollars into his wallet. “Haven’t you heard the saying cheaters never prosper?”

The man swings at Spencer, but he dodges the punch. “Gimme back my money!”

The crowd pushes in closer. There’s no better entertainment than a fist fight on the strip.

“It’s not your money.” Spencer fights off a smirk.

The man lets out a scream and lunges at Spencer. He manages to grab Spencer around his waist and pull him to the ground. Spencer lands on his back with a thud, the back of his head hitting the concrete with a solid crack, causing his ears to ring. The man straddles Spencer’s hips and gets a good hit in, connecting solidly with Spencer’s left cheekbone. He swings again, this time hitting Spencer squarely in the mouth. He tastes blood, sharp and coppery on this tongue. Spencer plants his feet on the ground and bucks his hips up, sending the conman off balance. His hands land on either side of Spencer’s head and Spencer takes his right arm and reaches across the man’s body. Using his left hand, he pushes against the guy’s right shoulder and pulls at his waist with his right. The man flies off to the side and Spencer takes the opportunity to swing. He punches the man right in the eye socket. He throws one leg over the man’s body and lands on his knee, keeping his other leg stretched out. With one hand on the guy’s throat and the other pushed against his chest, he hisses, “It’s not your money.”

The conman claws at Spencer’s face in a last ditch effort, raking his nails down his neck. Spencer grabs the man’s hands with one hand and squeezes his neck with the other. The man’s hands fly to his neck, trying to pry Spencer’s hand off. He gives one last squeeze before standing up, leaving the man sputtering on the ground. The security guard from the casino nearby finally intervenes. “Hey! No fighting!”

Spencer spits blood on the ground and wipes the back of his mouth. His head pounds, a headache pushing against his eyes. “We just finished.” 

The security guard looks at Spencer and recognition crosses his face. “Man, I like you, Vincent. Get out of here before I have to call the cops and ban you from the premises.” The conman runs towards the heart of the strip and the security guard doesn’t give chase. 

Spencer nods and begins to walk off in the direction of his apartment, each step making his back ache. His ears are still ringing, but he’s up one hundred dollars, which is enough for the water bill due tomorrow. It’s only when he’s trudging into his building that he realizes he went into that con with the intention of picking a fight. He had known, like all Vegas natives, what those street magicians do. He had known the conman would try to trick him. And Spencer agreed to play and bet money on it; money he then took for himself. In a fit of rage, he lashes out and slams his fist into the wall of resident mailboxes. He feels his knuckles crack under the force and the vibrations radiate up his arm and into his shoulder. He bites his tongue to keep from crying out in pain and swears under his breath. Making his way slowly up the stairs, he tries to rationalize what he did. If the conman hadn’t picked him, he would have chosen some other person to scam. Spencer was just stopping him before he could get started. It wasn’t because Spencer was angry and had been since arriving in Vegas. 

There wasn’t a vat of rage bubbling beneath the surface. Spencer wasn’t angry; he had no _right_ to be angry at anyone but himself. If he had just been more careful, had just paid attention more, his mom would still be alive. How did he not notice Lindsey Vaughn was living in his apartment building? It was all his fault, really. He couldn’t put the blame on anyone else, not even his team. He should have known Cat would strike back. She wouldn’t die in that cell without at least trying. He should have known. _He should have known._ And now his mom is dead, all because Spencer didn’t notice the obvious. 

He stands in his dinky bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror. There are dark circles under his hazel eyes, and his eyes look flat and dead, like there’s nothing behind them. His lip is split and he can still taste blood leaking over his tongue. There’s a purple bruise blossoming across his cheek, flecked with red dots of blood coming to the surface. Red, angry lines criss-cross his face and neck from the conman’s dirty nails. They sting when he touches them, and some are oozing blood. There’s blood spatter on his white t-shirt, and Spencer doesn’t know if it’s his or the conman’s. He looks down at his knuckles, which are bright red and sore. He looks back up at the mirror and his reflection stares back, unblinking, unfeeling. 

He compartmentalizes. He tucks away all of his feelings of regret, shame, disgust, and anger into a tiny box and he shoves it into the back of his mind. A bit of him breaks off and dissolves.

* * *

Three days later, Spencer’s hand still throbs and he can’t wrap the gauze he got from CVS around his knuckles tight enough, so he texts Reina. _Are you home?_ he taps out. 

He busies himself with sliding more books onto his already nearly full bookshelf while he waits for a response. He’s been back in Vegas for two months. Two long months of hardly any sleep and trying to avoid any thoughts of his mom or the BAU. He’s been mildly successful. He keeps his old cellphone and his badge shoved under his mattress in the corner of his cramped studio apartment. Sometimes he considers turning his phone back on, just long enough that Garcia will get a notification; just so they know he’s alive. But he knows that if he turned it on, he wouldn’t be able to turn it back off, and his old team would descend on him like guardian angels, demanding he let them help him. That’s not what he wants. Not right now. And it wouldn’t be right to go back. He failed his mom. It would only be a matter of time before he failed his team. 

There’s a knock on his door. On the other side, Reina calls out, “Let me in!” Spencer swings the door open and looks down at her. The huge grin slides off her face as she takes in his haggard appearance. “ _Válgame Dios_ , what the fuck happened to you?” She reaches up and gently prods the bruise on his cheek. 

He winces and leans away from her. “I got into a fight with a conman. It’s no big deal. I just think I broke my hand. Could you wrap it for me?”

“You _broke_ your hand?” 

“I think so. It feels like it.” He looks down at his crooked fingers. “It looks like it.”

“You need to go to the hospital then!” She starts digging around in her pockets, and then pulls out her car keys. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”

“No!” Spencer protests, grabbing her keys. “No, I- I don’t have any insurance and I’m… I’m not the biggest fan of hospitals.” He can already smell the saline, the clinical cleanliness. He scrunches up his nose.

“Vincent…” she starts, trailing off. She never calls him that. She puts her keys back in her pocket and reaches out for his broken hand. She holds his hand gently and runs her fingers tenderly over his swollen knuckles. He knows she’s worried, and he is, too. He knows his bones won’t heal right if he doesn’t have a doctor look at them, but he really doesn’t have any insurance and he wants to avoid putting his name on any official record, even a fake name.

“I know. I-” He stops, rakes his fingers through his hair, and starts again. “I don’t- I told you I was in prison.” He thinks of the prisoners in the infirmary, poisoned. He had put them there. “I managed to piss a few people off when I was in there. I don’t want them to find me. Putting my name on any record, that- that makes it easier for them to find me.”

“What were you in for?” she asks, voice quiet. 

He hesitates, but this is Reina. He trusts her. “I was- My name was cleared. I was- I _am_ innocent.” He swallows. “Murder.”

“Murder?” she repeats, and she sounds so small. 

“Reina, I swear I’m innocent. I was cleared. I was- I was framed. I didn’t kill anyone.” He bites his tongue. The lie makes his stomach roll. “I didn’t kill _her_.”

She looks at him and he can see her dissecting his words. “But you have killed people before.”

“I- Yes.” He feels like he’s going to be sick. He thinks of the first person he killed, Phillip Dowd. Spencer killed him with a bullet to the head. He had run himself into the ground trying to figure out if there was a way he could have avoided it, but eventually came to terms with what he had done. He remembers every person he’s killed. 

Reina looks back down at his hand and bites her lip. “They were bad people, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” he breathes. “They were. I was in law enforcement and-”

“You don’t have to explain anything you don’t want to,” she interrupts. There’s grease under her fingernails, and her hands are calloused. She smells like coffee and mint and her lipstick is smudged just a little bit at the corners. She reminds Spencer so much of JJ that he could cry. 

“You remind me of my friend,” he tells her softly, voice cracking.

“Hand me the wrap,” she says. She looks at the roll of gauze he’s handed her. “ _Dios mío_ , have you got any actual wrap?” Spencer shakes his head. “Okay, you’re coming with me to CVS. Tell me about this friend of yours. They better be amazing to make me remind you of them.”

“She is. She’s my best friend,” he whispers. And he finally, _finally_ , lets himself cry.

* * *

Later in CVS, he tells Reina about JJ. “I loved her. I still do, but… I can’t do anything about it.”

“Well, why not?” she asks as she browses the wrap selection. 

Spencer holds his hand to his chest, eyes fixed on the flickering fluorescent lights. “She’s married and has two kids with a good man.”

“You’re a good man.”

He smiles weakly. “She deserves someone better than me anyway. Someone whose heart is always in the right place.”

Reina snorts. “No one’s heart is always in the right place.”

“Her husband always tries, though.”

“And you don’t?” She pauses in her pursuit of medical wrap.

“Not tonight, picking a fight with a conman.”

“He was probably a low-life anyway. He deserved it,”

Spencer shrugs. 

“Did you love her before she was married?”

“Yes,” he answers easily. “I knew when I realized she was the only person to call me- to call me by a nickname. No one else had ever called me that before and it made me feel… special.”

“What was the nickname?”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that my chance with her is gone. The only thing I can do is move forward.”

“Why’d you leave?” she asks, finally selecting some bandage wrap and turning to face him. “If you love her so much, why did you leave her?”

“It’s complicated.”

She sighs. “Vince…” 

“She’s married, Reina. I’m the godfather to her kids. And she- she’s been through stuff. I- There’s no way I could be there for her in the capacity she needs, not now. And-” He stops, and squeezes his broken hand into a fist, using the pain to ground him. “She doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Did you ever ask her? How she feels, I mean.”

“No.”

“So how do you know?”

“She’s married, Reina!”

Reina begins to walk towards the registers, and Spencer follows. “There are a lot of loveless marriages out there.”

“No. No, her and her husband-” He thinks of when Will was shot during the bank robbery. And he was with Kevin at headquarters, useless. He wasn’t there for JJ when she needed him. Will has never let JJ down. Spencer has. “She doesn’t.”

“But-”

“Reina,” he snaps. “I’m done talking about it. She’s in D.C. and I’m here. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Okay, okay,” she surrenders and hands the wrap to the cashier. Spencer pulls out his wallet and pays, jaw clenched. “I just- you deserve to be happy, Vincent.”

He doesn’t say anything. JJ deserves to be happy. Spencer… He deserves a lot of things, and right now happiness is not at the top of that list. He deserves to be in his mom’s spot, blown to bits. He deserves to be rotting in a jail cell. So he squeezes his hand into a fist and takes the pain. It’s the least he can do.

* * *

The barn door moves. JJ raises her gun, the hair on the back of her neck tingling. “Reid?” She moves to the entrance of the barn, leaves and twigs cracking beneath her shoes. “Reid?” The chains hanging from the rafters clank together. She can hear her breath, her pounding heart. She flicks on her flashlight and creeps slowly inside. Her blood roars in her ears. She takes another step forward, and her shoe lands in something tacky. She drops her eyes down, and stares in horror at the puddle of blood congealing on the ground, hay floating in the viscous fluid. The blood swirls. She raises her gun and flashlight, illuminating a torn and bloodied mattress, the remains of the girl still there like discarded meat. The three rabid dogs growl, and then lunge. She screams and fires blindly. The gun is ear-shatteringly loud in the quiet night, and she trips over something and lands on her back, elbows slamming into the floor. She looks up, and the dogs and mattress are gone. 

JJ gets up quickly, brushing hay and dirt off her clothes. It’s pitch black, save for one hanging, flickering lightbulb. Underneath it is Spencer, dressed in his dirty blue prison garb with his hands cuffed behind his back. Blood stains his hair and forehead. His shirt is torn and bloodied. His chin is against his chest, and she watches as he takes one shallow breath after another. “Spencer!” she cries and he jerks his head up, squinting in the dim light. “Spencer!”

His eyes widen in fear, and he struggles against the restraints across his chest. “No! No!” he screeches. His chair scrapes against the floor, rocking so violently JJ fears he’ll tip over. Panic laces through his voice and his eyes track something JJ can’t see. He fights against the restraints harder, almost feral. Spit flies from his mouth as he screams. 

“Spencer!” she shrieks. “ _Spencer_!” She can’t move; she can only watch.

He screams himself hoarse, until blood drips from his mouth. And then, at the edge of the shadows, JJ sees him: Tobias Hankel. 

“ _Spencer_!” she roars, and wills herself to move, but she can’t, why can’t she move, she needs to help him, why can’t she-

Tobias raises his gun and rests it against Spencer’s temple. It glints in the yellow light. JJ looks around for hers, but she can’t find it. Spencer cries, calling out for someone, _anyone_ , to help, and JJ watches. Tobias turns the safety off and rests his finger on the trigger. Spencer’s screams get louder, and JJ feels her ears start to bleed. It drips down her neck and under her shirt. Tobias pulls the trigger. 

She’s screaming. JJ knows she’s screaming, but she can’t stop. Will is awake in a second, arms already wrapping around her, lips against her ear. “Shh, honey, it’s okay.” Her heart races, blood thumping in her ears, drowning out Will’s voice. She can still see the look of pure terror on Spencer’s face whenever she closes her eyes. Will rubs her back, shushing her as she sobs. She’s crying out Spencer’s name like a prayer. 

“I’m sorry,” she tells Will, voice hoarse.

“For what?” he asks, hooking his chin over her shoulder and pressing their cheeks together. She matches her breaths to his and the pounding in her ears quiets. She hears the hum of electricity from the lamp Will turned on. The sink is dripping in their bathroom. She can faintly hear the white noise machine in Michael’s room. 

_For never being able to love you with all I have, for always wondering what could have been, for having too many imagined futures without you in them. For waking you up screaming another man’s name, for this not being the first time I’ve done that, for it not being the last_. “For waking you up,” she says instead. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” He’s warm and sturdy against her back. He feels like coming home. And JJ still can’t give him all of her heart. She can’t give all of herself to the man who has given her two kids, loved her for over a decade, and uprooted his whole for her. Because there’s always going to be that small part of her deep inside that loves Spencer. There’s always going to be that part of her that wonders what could have happened if she hadn’t been so afraid. 

“It was about Spencer again,” she whispers, stating the obvious. “We were back in that barn in Atlanta.” JJ had told Will about that case after they had started dating. She told him what happened to Spencer, about the dogs, and about Tobias Hankel. She never told Will that that was when she realized she was in love with Spencer. She had felt the rush of relief when she saw him hunched over Hankel’s body—broken, battered, and bloodied, but alive. Her heart constricted, and she suddenly understood every stupid cliche about love. She shakes her head. “I don’t- Will, I don’t wanna talk about.” She closes her eyes, but she sees Tobias pull the trigger and flinches. 

“Are you sure? I think it would help,” he coaxes.

She sees the concern clouding his eyes. “No. No, I can’t. Please, I just wanna go back to sleep.”

Will seems to consider pushing it, but in the end he nods. He curls himself around her like an apostrophe, strong arms holding her close. He smells like his Old Spice body wash, pine trees, and ocean air. His body is warm and comforting, and she feels safe. He wraps one of his hands around hers and holds them against her chest. She can feel her own heartbeat under her hand. She wants to apologize to him, because Will isn’t stupid. He has to know— _must_ know—how she feels about Spencer. And yet, he’s never said a word. He even agreed to let Spencer be the godfather to their kids. Will is a _good_ man, and JJ doesn’t deserve him. She doesn’t fall back asleep.

In the morning, she makes breakfast for her boys, all three of them. She makes sure Henry gets on the bus and drops Michael off with the neighbors. Her and Will exchange coffee flavored kisses before leaving for work, and she pushes the guilt creeping up her spine back down. On her drive to Quantico, she turns the volume on the radio all the way up, blasting some rap song she can’t name. She sits in her car in the parking lot for a long time, radio blowing out her speakers, until Luke knocks on her window. 

“Jamming out?” he asks when she shuts off her car. “You okay?”

“Long night,” she replies, and lets him interpret that how he may.

When she gets to the sixth floor, she makes a beeline for Garcia’s lair. She knocks on the door and then steps inside, the door closing behind her with a click. “Hey, Penelope,” she greets, walking up to her chair. 

“Hey!” Penelope chirps, spinning around in her chair. “What’s up?”

“Any updates on Spencer?”

Garcia freezes, just for a moment, before saying, “Nothing. I’ve still got his cellphone flagged so that we’ll be alerted the second it turns back on. I’ve got his name tagged in my system so if it shows up in any hospital, police, or morgue database, we’ll know.”

“Morgue?” JJ asks. It feels like there’s a lead ball in her stomach. The eggs from that morning threaten to reappear.

“Just… covering all the bases,” Garcia mumbles. “Jayje, we’ll find him. You know no one can stay hidden from me for long.”

“I know you’re the best, Pen, but Spencer knows that, too. He knows how to hide.”

Garcia purses her lips. “Are there any aliases he may use? I can tag those, too. I just assumed he’d use his real name for everything. That was stupid. I should have-”

“Penelope.” She lays a hand on her arm, interrupting her. “Try Joseph Bell.”

She clacks away on her keyboard. “Lots of stuff on this name, looks like he was the-”

“Inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, I know. It was… It was one of the aliases he used when he was with Maeve.”

“Oh, right. I’ll put a flag on that, too.”

“Try Thomas Merton as well,” JJ instructs. 

“He’ll turn up,” Garcia whispers. “He has to.” She’s reassuring herself more than JJ.

“I know, but how long could that take? It’s been two months, Penelope. I- I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

“We’ll find him,” she asserts again. “ _I’ll_ find him.”

JJ rests her chin on her shoulder and leans against her. “I know you will, Penelope. I know.” They sit in front of Garcia’s screens for a long time, watching the search on Spencer’s name and his aliases, until Emily calls them to the round table for a case.

* * *

Spencer flexes his hand, the one he broke four months ago, and it twinges. The bones healed wrong, so his fingers are slightly crooked. He turns his head to whisper into Reina’s ear. “Get me a coke, but make the bartender put it in a highball glass.” 

“Yeah, I know,” she mutters, pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

He pats her leg as she stands up and pretends to watch her ass as she saunters away. The tight red dress she’s wearing leaves little to the imagination, and several other poker players watch her leave, too. Months of coming to the casinos have taught him how to best blend in. If he looks and acts like a high roller, he’ll be less likely to be banned from the casino. He’s already managed to get himself banned from one, and he doesn’t want to keep adding to the list. Spencer found he gets the best luck when he comes dressed in a suit with Reina on his arm. It’s become their tradition to come down to the strip once a week and make as much cash as they can. Spencer can place higher bets without having to worry about looking sketchy. Last week, he and Reina left with twenty-thousand dollars in cash. The rest of the week, he stays home and reads or goes to the library. He’s found that with his new wardrobe, he blends in perfectly with the college crowd, so he’ll sneak into lectures at local universities and sit in the back and listen. 

Tonight, he’s wearing a simple black suit with a white button up, the top few buttons undone, and a thin golden chain around his neck. His black slacks fit amazingly according to Reina. He’s got his hair slicked back with gel, but still loose. He’s been nursing drinks all night, none of which had alcohol. It’s easier to blend in with a drink in his hand. 

In the casino, Spencer is in his element. He’s become a type of conman. Reina returns with his drink and perches on his lap again. She cards her fingers through his hair, falling into her role as a ditzy side piece. She slides her hand under his shirt and across his chest, tracing lazy circles over his skin. At first it was awkward for them, but Spencer learned to suppress his physical reactions at being touched like this. Now, he just grins lazily and takes a sip from his drink, swirling the liquid around in the glass. At the other end of the poker table, another player wipes his brow. He’s got a terrible poker face. The man looks up at Spencer with Reina draped all over him and scowls. “At the table, really?” he barks. 

Spencer smirks at him and lets his head fall forward so he can brush a kiss over Reina’s shoulder. It took him _months_ to be able to fall into this role so perfectly, and he’s a little proud of himself for how far he’s come. The dealer rolls his eyes. “Mr. Lachlin can have whoever he wants beside him at the table.” Spencer nods at the dealer and pushes in his whole pile of chips. It totals to a little more than ten thousand, but his hand is good. 

“All in,” he says and holds his cards close to his body. Reina giggles and trails her lips up his neck, stopping below his ear. He resists a shudder. Reina _knows_ he hates it when she does that. He squeezes her waist in warning. 

“Fuck it,” the guy at the other end says, and pushes all his chips in, too. The other three players at the table fold. The man lays down his hand: a full house. Spencer lets his face fall and the man perks up. “A-ha!” he exclaims and starts pulling the chips towards himself. 

Reina laughs again, and Spencer clicks his tongue. “Not so fast.” He lays down his cards: a royal flush. 

“Motherfucker!” the guy shouts, getting to his feet so quickly his chair knocks over. “You’re gonna pay for that.”

“Hey! Keep talking like that and I’ll get you kicked out,” the dealer threatens. 

The man huffs and stalks away. Spencer collects his winnings—nearly twenty-five thousand in total—and knocks on the table. “That’s it for me, gentlemen. It was nice playing with you all. Unfortunately, I have other… things to attend to.” On cue, Reina runs one of her hands over his stomach and hooks her fingers through his belt loops, tugging his hips towards her. “Goodnight.”

They cash out at the booth and then walk outside the casino, arm in arm. Once they are far enough away from the casino, they let go of each other and drop the personas. Spencer rubs at his neck. “You left lipstick stains, didn’t you?”

Reina just grins in response. “I love to annoy you.”

“I think you love watching me breakout wherever you kiss me. God, why does that happen?” he mutters, still rubbing at his neck. His skin itches and the waxy lipstick makes his fingers sticky when he rubs at it. 

“Because your skin is prissy.”

“Skin can’t be prissy.”

“Don’t start with one of your spiels, _el cerebro_. Last time you went on a bender about how and why different skin types react to different stimuli I didn’t want to see you for a week. I don’t want a repeat of that. Especially when you owe me dinner.”

“Owe you dinner for what?” Spencer says. “If anything, _you_ owe _me_ dinner! What was it you said last week? ‘I’ve never felt more alive!’ That’s what you said to me.”

She huffs. “I never said that.”

“You forget I have an eidetic memory. I can’t forget things.”

“So you’ve said. Not even the bad stuff.”

A heavy silence falls. “Yeah. Not even the bad stuff.” 

It’s late November. At night it’s cold enough to warrant a coat, even in Las Vegas, but Spencer and Reina walk the streets without them. He can see the goosebumps prickling on Reina’s skin and slides his blazer off his shoulders and drapes it across hers. His skin feels hot from the casino. All the physical contact in there puts him on edge. It feels like his skin is trying to slough off his bones and melt into the concrete. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets and says, “Did I ever tell you what it was like being a child prodigy in a Las Vegas public school?” 

“No. What was that like?” She’s using one hand to hold his jacket closed over her chest, the other arm wrapped around her waist.

“Hell,” he chuckles. He pulls his box of Marlboros out of his pocket and places a cigarette between his lips. “I graduated high school when I was twelve. Imagine that: a little twelve-year-old running around with high schoolers. God, it was… Awful doesn’t even begin to describe it. One time they tied me naked to a goal post and just laughed at me. They left me there for hours.”

“Vincent, what the fuck?” She looks up at him, eyes concerned. 

Spencer lights his cigarette and takes the first inhale. When he exhales, he watches the smoke curl up into the air. “That was the worst of it. Everything else was pretty mild comparatively. During lunch, some of the kids would dump drinks down my shirt or ‘accidentally’ trip and dump all their food on me. I started eating in the library after a while. I was shoved into lockers and locked in empty classrooms. That was okay, though. I could sit in the quiet and read until a teacher came and got me out. One time on the bus ride home, a sophomore sat on me until I passed out and when I woke up, he sat on me again.” He pauses and tilts his head back, squinting at the stars. They’re not entirely visible with all the light pollution, but he can catch glimpses of the brighter celestial bodies, like Venus and Sirius. “It wasn’t so bad in college. College kids don’t really give a fuck who’s in their classes. A lot of my classmates in undergrad showed up drunk, high, or hungover the majority of the time. None of them cared about a fifteen-year-old kid in their lecture.”

“How old were you when you graduated?” 

“Fifteen. I got my first PhD when I was seventeen.” He offers the remainder of the cigarette to Reina, but she declines. 

“First?”

“I have three.” He stubs out the cigarette with his foot, and then picks up the butt and throws it in a trashcan nearby. 

“There’s a lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?” Reina says, and it’s not in a mean way. It’s more thoughtful than anything else, but it hurts Spencer nonetheless. His fingers twitch, and he craves the blissful nothingness that dilaudid has always given him.

He wants to tell Reina everything, from his first day at the BAU to Tobias Hankel and George Foyet and Cat Adams and Mr. Scratch. He wants to tell her what happened in Mexico and what he did in prison. He wants to tell her about JJ and Morgan, Garcia and Hotch, Emily, Luke, Tara, and Rossi. He wants to talk about Henry and Michael. He wants to tell her where the scar on his neck came from, why he had to use a cane for a while, and that his name is actually Spencer Reid. It all bubbles up in his throat and he forces himself to swallow all the things he wants to tell Reina. 

He’s always been good at rationalizing his emotions, at shutting them down so he doesn’t have to feel. So he tells himself it’s for the better. If his past ever catches up to him, he doesn’t want Reina to get caught in the crossfire. If she knew everything, she’d be just one more person Spencer could stand to lose. So he boxes up those emotions and pushes them away. He’s not lying to her; he’s just not giving her all the facts. It’s to protect her. Another piece of himself falls away.

* * *

JJ sets Henry’s dinner plate in front of him and ruffles his hair. “Let me know if you need me to cut up your steak for you.” She hands Michael his fork, one made specially for toddlers, and then sits down between her boys. She and Will decided she should be the one to talk to them about Spencer. “I need to talk to you boys about Uncle Spencer.”

“Pencer?” Michael repeats. 

“Is he okay?” Henry asks, ignoring his mashed potatoes in favor of his mom. 

JJ looks down at her hands. “I… don’t know, buddy. We don’t know where Uncle Spencer is.”

“Can’t you call him?” he says.

“We tried. He didn’t answer. We don’t know when he’ll be back.”

Henry frowns. “So… Uncle Spencer ran away?” He looks so upset and JJ can see his thoughts churning out, trying to figure out what she’s saying. 

“Yeah, he did. But Uncle Spencer is a big boy, he’ll be okay.” She looks over at Michael, who’s more interested in his food than her. His memories of Spencer are already fading. He’s only three. Spencer had called it childhood amnesia one time, when Will had wondered aloud when Henry would start remembering things when he was a toddler. “He’ll come back.”

Henry pushes his food away. “But when?”

“I don’t know, Henry. I wish I did.” 

“Mama, out,” Michael demands, pulling at the strap keeping him in his booster seat. Even though he hasn’t finished dinner, JJ lets him out and he runs to the living room to play with his toys. 

Henry stares down at the table. “Why did he leave?”

“Oh, baby,” JJ whispers, and holds her arms out. Henry crawls into her lap and wraps his arms around her neck, burying his face in her shoulder. She rubs his back and feels his first tears start to drip onto her shirt, though his body doesn’t shake with sobs. “I don’t know why. But I think it’s because he’s really upset that his mom died. You remember her funeral right?”

He nods into her shoulder, his hands gripping her shirt tighter.

“Uncle Spencer loved his mom very much,” JJ tells him, voice thick. “And sometimes when people get really, really sad, they do things they wouldn’t normally do. Does that make sense?”

He sniffs. “Like when my best friend moved away and I was sad and I hit Michael?”

“Exactly like that, baby. Uncle Spencer just decided he needed to go away.” 

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.” 

Henry pulls back and wipes his nose. JJ pushes the hair out of his face and brushes her thumb over his cheek. “Will he be gone forever?” he whispers.

She kisses his forehead and pulls him back down against her chest. She starts to rock him. “I hope not, baby. I really hope not.”

* * *

Spencer starts hunting for an actual job in late January. He thinks about applying to some district schools to be a teacher, but the background checks require he submit his fingerprints, and he knows his are logged in the federal prison system, so he passes on that. Reina suggests he be a waiter, telling him he could probably scrape in some good tips, but he knows he’d get bored too fast. He considers applying for another doctorate, but quickly squashes the idea. He’d have to re-apply as Vincent Lachlin, who doesn’t even have a B.A. to his name. In the end, it only feels natural to segue from a professional gambler to a dealer. 

Reina mourns the loss of her so-called ‘spotlight as his arm candy’ but even she was growing tired of going out and playing a character she wasn’t. Spencer had snorted out a laugh when she said that, the irony not lost on him. 

He tracks down a guy who forges official paperwork, and pays five hundred dollars for a fake GED so he can take a dealer training course, which he passes in a week compared to the eight to twelve it normally takes. He secures an interview with the hiring director at Westgate Casino. He had frequented the casino many times during the last few months and had gotten friendly with some of the dealers, who then put in a good word for him when he told them he was looking to apply to work with them. The interview was easy, and he even managed to convince the hiring director that he didn’t need to do a background check. It took some minor blackmail (Spencer could tell he was cheating on his wife because his wedding band was missing but there were wedding photos on his desk), but Spencer was eventually hired on as Westgate Casino’s newest dealer. 

So that’s how he finds himself in mid-February: getting into uniform for his first shift with Reina lounging on his mattress (which he finally got a frame for) while he changes in his bathroom. He adjusts the suspenders on his shoulders and makes sure they lie flat. His bowtie is slightly crooked and he’s combed his hair back. He feels ridiculous, but it’s reminiscent of how he used to dress. 

“You look absolutely dashing, darling,” Reina purrs in a mid-Atlantic accent when Spencer steps out. 

He feels a blush climb up his chest and into his cheeks. “Thank you.”

“Is this what parents feel like when they’re sending their kids off to their first day of school?” she jokes, wiping away fake tears.

“I’m older than you,” he points out. “And I’m assuming most kids don’t go to school in suspenders unless it’s part of a uniform or unless you’re me in high school when I was going through my suspenders phase when I was eleven. I also wore a bowtie on my first day of kindergarten.”

“Of course you did, _chulo_ ,” she says and rolls her eyes. “Can I take a picture?”

“Why?” Spencer slides his phone into his pocket and grabs his wool trench coat from his wardrobe, also an upgrade from the PVC piping that had once served as his closet. 

“For posterity. And I need a new contact picture for you. The one of you asleep and drooling on my couch isn’t cutting it anymore.”

“What?” He looks up from where he’s adjusting his suspenders clip. “When did you take that?” He can’t imagine it’s a very flattering photo.

“I dunno, sometime after a night at the casino. I had gotten pretty drunk that night and you stayed with me to make sure I didn’t choke on my vomit in my sleep, and when I woke up to go pee, you were passed out on my couch.” 

“I remember that.” Reina had sung AC/DC as they walked the strip. It seemed like she had their whole discography memorized. 

“Yeah, I know, _tonto_. God, sometimes I hate your fucking memory. I can’t have one cringey moment with you and hope it’ll be forgotten.”

He grins and taps his temple. “I have a whole folder up here of your cringey moments.”

“I will kill you where you stand,” she tells him, but she’s grabbing the remote to his TV from his bedside table and doesn’t look like she’s going to be getting up from his bed anytime soon. 

“I’m so scared,” he monotones. 

“Yeah, yeah. You fine with it if I stay here while you work? My next door neighbor just got a new boyfriend and listening to them fuck is driving me nuts.”

“Only if you order food and leave some for me.” He pulls on his coat and pats his pockets, making sure he has his wallet, cigarettes, and lighter.

“Can I use your Netflix account?”

“I only got it for you so you’d stop complaining about how I don’t have cable.”

Reina purses her lips as she opens Netflix on his TV. “You know, we’re basically married.”

He pauses. “Am I supposed to have a response to that?”

She shrugs. “I was just pointing it out.”

“That wasn’t you admitting to having feelings for me?” His skin prickles at the thought. He doesn’t want feelings to complicate their friendship.

“Ew, Vince, no.”

Spencer lets out a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” he mumbles. “Please don’t forget to order food.”

“How could I? I’m already fantasizing about pad thai. Go! Or you’ll be late.”

“Don’t make a mess,” he warns.

“Jesus fuck, it’s like I’m your kid or something. I know how you are about messes.” She waves her hand. “Go, I won’t burn the building down in your absence.” 

Spencer grins to himself and steps out the door, locking it behind him. For the first time in a long time, he feels good about things. So it only goes to show that everything goes to shit a few months later in June. 


	2. phagocytosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A case in Las Vegas brings the BAU to Sin City and Spencer must reconcile with his past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you to my beta [redbullandcupcakebatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbullandcupcakebatter). Sorry this update is two days late; I started a new job in the middle of a pandemic, so things have been a little hectic.

_Shame is a soul-eating emotion. -Carl Jung_

* * *

“We’ve got a case,” Emily says, walking backwards towards the round table with a stack of files in hand. 

JJ and Matt exchange a look. They’re exhausted and desperate to get home to their families. They had just wrapped up a case involving the gruesome mutilation of college aged boys in Michigan. JJ could still see the awful words carved into the soft skin of their bellies; words like ‘faggot’ and ‘fairy’. Most of the boys had been closeted and their murders outed them to their friends and families. One family even went so far as to disown their son after his body had been found, claiming it was for the best that he had been killed. Tara had just barely managed to hold JJ back as she listened to Paul’s mother spit vitriol about her own flesh and blood. JJ had been left seething with rage and just wanted to see her boys and hold them, to remind them she would love them no matter what. They caught the unsub in his apartment and after a fifteen minute standoff, he lowered his carving knife from his neck and surrendered. If JJ made the cuffs a little too tight, no one had to know. She wanted a shower and a warm meal, but the new case took precedent. 

“I’ll call Luke and Penelope,” she tells Matt, and he nods. He, Tara, and Rossi head up to the round table while JJ stays in the bullpen to call her friends back. Luke and Penelope had made a hasty escape after the case was closed, and she hates to call them right back. Once she’s finished, she heads to the table. “They’re on their way,” she says to the partially assembled team when she lowers herself into a chair. 

Emily distributes the files. “We can catch Luke up on the jet. We’re heading to Las Vegas.”

“That’s where Spence is from,” JJ says absently, not realizing she’s speaking out loud. It’s been a year since he disappeared and there have been no signs of him. Nothing has turned up on Garcia’s search. JJ’s concern for Spencer’s safety has yet to subside. Each night before she falls asleep she wonders if she’ll wake up to a call in the morning telling her his body has been discovered. She looks up from her file when no one says anything else and notices everyone staring at her. “What?”

“Nothing,” Emily says. She grabs the remote and begins clicking through crime scene photos on the screen. “Four women have turned up dead in Vegas, all within a week of them being reported missing, except for the first victim, Annabelle Collins.” She brings up four photos of four women who look like they could all be related. “Two prostitutes, an ER nurse, and a school teacher.” 

“Four women in three months,” Matt mumbles. “That’s a pretty quick turnover. Why are we just now being called in?” 

Emily presses another button and a photo of a young woman with dark hair and brown eyes appears on screen. “Daisy MacDonald, twenty-five, was reported missing last night by her sister, Quinn. She’s a vet tech from Vegas.”

“Police think her disappearance is related?” Tara asks, squinting at her file. 

“She certainly matches the victimology. She looks like the previous victims and she’s the right age,” Rossi says. 

“The women are held for a week and- Oh, Jesus,” Tara mutters. “Brutally raped and mutilated. Their bodies are cut up almost beyond recognition. Except for Annabelle Collins”

“His first victim maybe. Developed a taste for it with her and then the M.O. followed.” JJ frowns at the crime scene photos. Shallow cuts criss cross their torsos, intermixed with deeper ones. “Are the shallow cuts hesitation marks?”

“I don’t know,” Rossi answers. “The rest of the victims have them along with the deeper ones. Maybe we’re dealing with two unsubs?”

“Maybe it’s part of his foreplay,” Matt suggests. “Maybe this is his kink.”

“What’s the cause of death?” JJ asks.

“Asphyxiation from strangulation,” Emily says. She zooms in on a photo of the latest victim's body. JJ stares at the bruising around the woman’s neck, at the unmistakable marks only hands and fingers can make. “Each victim’s body was found in or near dumpsters.”

“Speaks to his regard for women,” Rossi states. 

“And with Daisy MacDonald being reported missing, we have one week to find her alive,” Emily turns off the TV. “Wheels up in twenty, guys. I’ll tell Luke to meet us on the tarmac.”

JJ closes her file and stands up, pressing her hands to the base of her spine. She hasn’t slept in nearly twenty hours, save for a quick nap on the jet when they were coming back from Michigan. Her neck and back hurt from sleeping sitting up. Rossi walks up to her, rubbing his chin. “Are you gonna be okay, JJ?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” she asks, tucking her file under her arm. She wonders if anyone’s brewed coffee. 

“It’s just… It’s been a year since Reid… And we’re going to his hometown. I know it might dredge up some memories and I just- I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

She forces a tight smile. She knows the team has been just as worried about her this past year as they have been about Spencer. They don’t need to worry about her, though. She’s dealt with loss before. She knows what she’s doing. “I’ll be fine, Rossi. It’s a case like any other.”

He squeezes her shoulder in a fatherly gesture. “Okay. If you need to talk, though, I’m here.”

“Thank you. Really.” 

In the year that Spencer has been gone, the team has fallen into a shaky routine working around the space he had left behind. No one has been hired in his absence, almost as if replacing him would put the final nail in the coffin and he would be gone for good. Garcia keeps the search running in the background, looking far and wide for any mention of Spencer’s name or his possible aliases in any sort of official record. There have been no hits. 

Spencer’s birthday passed in a weird silence. No one brought it up, and even Henry felt the tension JJ carried around the house with her as Spencer’s birthday and Halloween went by unacknowledged in the BAU. The Christmas party Rossi threw for the team felt forced. Spencer wasn’t there to lecture them about the history of the Christmas tree or Santa Claus or the pagan rituals the holiday pulls from. His absence is felt in the field; the task of geographical profiling falling on Luke, who despises it. Spencer isn’t there to draw connections only he could make or to rattle off statistics pertaining to the case. The team spends more time doing research into things he would have just _known_. So despite the year without him, the team has yet to adjust to his loss, and it’s beginning to affect their cases.

Things are beginning to crumble; JJ can feel it. The director is breathing down their necks about case turnover and she has heard whispers of transferring some of them to other departments. If they can’t figure out how to cope without Spencer long term, there won’t be a BAU for much longer, at least not in the capacity they are used to. Something deep inside JJ tells her this case will be the turning point. Everything matters. She looks up as she walks down to the bullpen and sees Emily standing by her desk in her office. 

The two of them make brief eye contact. They’re on the same page. They have to solve this case quickly, or they won’t be trusted to do their jobs anymore.

* * *

“Did you hear?” Oliver says, voice too close to Spencer’s ear for his liking.

“Hear what?” he asks and ducks away from Oliver. His shift starts in five minutes and he doesn’t want to be late to his table because he was too busy listening to Oliver’s gossip. 

“Another woman has been reported missing.”

He tilts his head, listening to Oliver recount the news report he heard on his way in. Spencer has been following the murders in Las Vegas and keeping tabs on it in his mind. The first victim, a prostitute named Annabelle Collins, had been found nearly three months ago not too far from Westgate. Spencer had seen her hanging around the strip from time to time, same as the next victim, Ruth Sandusky. Ruth was also a prostitute and her body had been found about two months ago. The next two victims, Jamie Ryce and Kendall Waston, suffered the same fate. All Spencer knew was what had been published in the papers or discussed on the radio. All that was being announced to the public was that the women were raped and murdered, but the details weren’t released. 

“God, is he on that shit again?” Desiree sneers, wrenching open her locker. She grabs her purse and pulls out her insulin pen. “Oliver, I hate hearing about it, please.” She screws a needle cap onto the pen and injects in her stomach, clicking the button down to push the medicine through the needle tip. “Vincent, come one. I’m sure you don’t wanna hear this anymore than I do. You look like the squeamish type.”

Spencer makes a face. “I’m not squeamish.”

“You hate being touched. I tried to shake your hand on your first day and you just told me it’s cleaner to kiss,” Oliver says. 

“Because it is! Your hands come in contact with way more surfaces than your lips do. No one goes around kissing everything, so technically, lips are cleaner than hands.”

“I thought you were coming on to me.”

“Why would you think that?” Spencer asks, closing his locker and spinning the combination lock. 

Desiree rolls her eyes. “Come on, casanova, our tables are backed up to each other tonight.” 

“See y’all on break,” Oliver calls as Spencer and Desiree go out onto the floor. 

Spencer’s working Blackjack and he relieves his coworker, Ian, from his post at the table. 

Ian grabs him by the back of his neck and pulls Spencer closer to whisper in his ear, “Guy on the far right has had just a little too much to drink. Keep an eye on him, yeah?” His breath is clammy and Spencer feels spit land on his neck. He shudders a bit, and rolls his shoulders to shake off his touch. He watches Ian limp away, favoring his left side. 

He wipes his ear and neck and wonders what it is about the majority of his coworkers that makes them want to crowd into Spencer’s space and make him viscerally uncomfortable. Only Desiree respects his need for personal space. He sits down at the table and grins at the patrons sitting across from him. The cards are ready to be reshuffled and cut, so Spencer falls into the easy routine of acquainting himself with the players.

Behind him, Desiree does the same at her Blackjack table. The casino is beginning to swell with people, becoming stuffy and warm in the June heat. Spencer feels a bead of sweat roll down his spine, and it makes him shiver. The sound of metallic slot machines and glasses clinking is causing a headache to pulse behind his eyes. He’d forgotten to take some over the counter medicine to stave off the inevitable pounding in his skull. He’ll have to wait until his smoke break, which could be as long as five hours away. He settles in for a rough first half of his shift. 

It’s nearly impossible for people to cheat at Blackjack, so Spencer allows his eyes to wander around Westgate in between rounds. He catches snippets of conversation, none of them particularly interesting. He deals deftly, keeping track of the running count and the true count in his head. It’s second nature to distinguish meaningful pairs and he updates his calculations effortlessly. He had always thought that having a menial job would cause his brain to deteriorate; if anything, though, Spencer has felt sharper than ever. His job stops when he leaves Westgate and doesn’t come home with him. He has time to pursue things outside of work. He’s even started to teach himself code, like HTML, CSS, and Java. Even while he’s working he can allow his mind to wander just a little bit. And now it wanders to the murders happening in his city. 

All the victims had been women with their mid-twenties to early thirties with dark hair and eyes. Spencer doesn’t know the cause of death, but he knows the bodies have been found in and around dumpsters. He had even walked by a dumpsite one day before work. He had hovered for a moment before Las Vegas PD shooed bystanders away. Spencer has already started a profile in his head based on the information he does have. _The unsub is probably a male in his late twenties to mid thirties. He has to be physically fit to subdue the women, unless he’s drugging them._ He hates working with limited information, but it’s not like he can storm the PD and demand to see their case files. He doesn’t work for the BAU anymore and-

His heart stops and he stutters in dealing out the cards. There’s been four victims in three months and a fifth woman is missing. The unsub has a consistent M.O. and a ritual, if his dumpsites are anything to go off of. It’s only a matter of time before the police department actually calls in the BAU, bringing his team closer to him than they have been in thirteen months. It makes his blood thump in his veins and roar in his ears. Spencer is not ready to face his old team or have his web of lies unravel in front of his new friends here, like Reina and Desiree or even Oliver, as pushy as he is into Spencer’s personal space. 

He thinks of Reina and how despite being so open and friendly, she’s slow to trust and somehow Spencer has earned her favor. Over the last few months, they’ve opened up more and more to each other. He’s talked about his childhood with her and she’s told him about hers. He learned more about her three brothers: Daniel, Xavier, and Isaac. She told him about watching Daniel, the oldest, and Isaac, the youngest, fall victim to addiction. She talked about dropping out of college to help Xavier help them through recovery and how she had to watch Daniel relapse and then eventually die from an overdose. She was honest, and Spencer wasn’t. He has thought about telling Reina who he really is exactly four hundred and fifty-seven times, but he has never opened his mouth and said, “My name is actually Spencer Reid.” 

He wonders what that says about him.

Spencer reaches the end of the deck and starts reshuffling. There’s nothing he can do about the possibility of his team coming to Vegas. Even if they do, it’s a big city of nearly 650,000 people. The odds of them crossing paths are slim. He hands the postillion to the player sitting all the way to the right and tells him to cut the deck. Spencer will just have to lay low until the case is solved. He grits his teeth and begins dealing out the cards. There’s nothing he can do but wait.

* * *

JJ juggles four cups of coffee in her hands as she crosses the precinct. In the conference room, Emily, Tara, and Matt pour over the crime scene photos while Rossi and Luke check out where Daisy MacDonald was last seen. She divvies out the coffee and stands in front of the evidence board, trying to find what connects the victims. So far, the only thing she’s uncovered is that they all look similar, suggesting the women are surrogates for someone. She purses her lips and tilts her head, thinking a forced new perspective might shed some light on a detail she may have missed. 

Emily’s phone rings and she answers, saying into the speaker, “Garcia, you’ve got me, JJ, Tara, and Matt.”

“Good,” Garcia says, “I’ll patch in Luke and Rossi and they can tell you what they’ve found.”

“Hey, guys,” Luke says over the phone. “Rossi and I didn’t find much at where Daisy was last seen. It was a coffee shop and the cashier found a credit card receipt with her name on it, dated nearly sixteen hours before she was reported missing. She had to have gone somewhere else between going to the shop and being abducted, so Garcia-”

“So I’m looking at her credit card activity to see if she went anywhere else,” Garcia interrupts. “So far, I’ve got nothing. If she went anywhere else she most likely paid in cash because the trail goes cold at that coffee shop.” 

Emily sighs. “So we’ve got nothing, then.”

“Not necessarily,” Rossi says. “Luke and I also swung by the dumpsites and they’re all pretty close together.” 

“So he probably abducts the women near to where he dumps them,” Matt fills in. “We need to establish a geographical profile.” 

JJ hears Luke groan over the phone. “We’ll be back at the precinct soon,” Luke mutters, “and I’ll get to work on that.” 

“Thank you, guys,” Emily says. “Garcia, keep looking for something that connects the victims.”

“Aye-aye, captain,” Garcia salutes, and the phone call ends. 

“Let’s outline what we know,” Emily instructs, grabbing a dry erase marker and finding an open space on the whiteboard. She uncaps the marker with her teeth and looks at JJ, Matt, and Tara. 

“He’s opportunistic,” Matt suggests. “He’s not stalking his victims. Annabelle, Jamie, and Kendall were all from Las Vegas, but Jamie was from Baltimore. She was only in Vegas for a bachelorette party.”

“He’s not disorganized, though,” Tarra continues. “All the victims except his first one had traces of Rohypnol in their systems. That’s a common date rape drug. When mixed with alcohol, it’s impossible to tell that the women have been drugged because the symptoms mimic drunkenness.”

JJ flips through the coroner’s report and the ME’s preliminary report. “None of the cuts were done post-mortem. It seems like the murder is secondary to him. He’s a rapist first and foremost.” She reads further down the report. “I would say he’s impotent, but the coroner found traces of semen in and on the latest victim, so he’s not using objects to rape them. And he’s no longer using condoms, which means he’s gaining confidence.”

“We had the samples fast-tracked to forensics, so we should know if the unsub is any databases soon,” Emily adds, quickly writing down everything they’ve said. 

“The murders aren’t just a forensic countermeasure so the women can’t identify him,” Matt says. “I mean, strangulation- that takes a while. And he uses his hands and not a belt or rope or anything like that. He must get some release from them.” 

“Well in the first victim, the coroner noted that he started strangling Annabelle and then would stop. It took him several times to finally go through with it,” JJ points out. “He finally starts killing the women on the first try with Jamie, his third victim.” She stares at everything Emily as written down. “So he’s opportunistic but organized, and he gets off on both the rape and murder, but the rape is most important to him.”

Luke and Rossi walk into the conference room and they both read what Emily has written. “If we can figure out where he’s getting his victims from, we can narrow our list down,” Rossi says, collapsing into a chair next to Tara. 

“Maybe he’s grabbing them from all over,” Matt suggests. 

Rossi purses his lips. “I don’t think so. The dumpsites Luke and I checked out were really close to each other. He definitely has a comfort zone.”

Luke stares at the map on the evidence board, and then grabs some push pins and starts marking off the dumpsites. “I really hate geographical profiling,” he mutters under his breath. 

There’s a knock on the conference room door, and Captain Desmond Marquee sticks his head in. “Just got word back from forensics. The killer’s DNA isn’t in any systems.”

JJ sighs in frustration. It’s never that easy. 

“Thank you, Captain,” Emily says and gives him a tight smile. Marquee nods, and then makes a hasty exit, leaving the team alone. 

“The women have to be surrogates,” JJ tells them. “They look too similar not to be. Our unsub can’t kill the actual object of his rage, so he’s finding replacements.”

“Based on the victims’ age, it’s probably an ex-wife or an ex-girlfriend. Definitely not a mother figure,” Tara says. 

“So we’re looking for a male in his late twenties to mid thirties. In Las Vegas. That suspect list is going to be _long_ ,” Matt says, tone pessimistic. 

“He most likely owns or rents a house,” Emily claims. “He holds these victims for a week. He needs space to work where he won’t be interrupted. In an apartment or condo, neighbors would hear something. Maybe he has a basement or a cellar that he uses; possibly an attic.”

Luke steps back from the map where he’s drawn a shaky circle around the dumpsites. “He probably works in this zone,” he says, tapping the map. “There’s a lot in there, though. Hotels, casinos, strip clubs.”

“I’ll have Garcia run all the victims’ credit cards and see if there’s any overlap in the places they went to before they were abducted,” Emily announces, already unlocking her phone. “JJ, Luke, I want you guys to interview Daisy’s sister, Quinn, and see if she knows where Daisy may have gone after the coffee shop. “Tara and Matt, track down Beth Andrews and Poppy Quimble. They reported Annabelle and Ruth missing. Beth and Poppy are also prostitutes. They probably know the corners Annabelle and Ruth frequented. Rossi, you and I will stay here and keep building the profile so Garcia can narrow down her list.” She walks over to the window and says into the phone, “Garcia, I have some parameters to shorten your list…”

JJ nods at Luke and he grabs the keys to one of the SUVs. The team splits up quickly, all of them happy to have a task outlined for them. Luke and JJ pass the ride to Quinn’s apartment mostly in silence, both of them running over the details of the case in their head. Luke finally speaks out loud once they park in front of Quinn’s building. “They have to be connected by a place. Garcia hasn’t found anything else connecting them.”

JJ gazes up at the building, squinting in the light. “Annabelle and Ruth probably knew each other since they were both prostitutes. But I can’t see how any of the victims could have known Jamie since she’s from Baltimore.”

“Hopefully Garcia can find something useful soon. The clock is ticking on Daisy.” 

Quinn MacDonald can’t give them a lot of information. “I already talked to the cops,” she says when Luke and JJ flash their badges. 

“We know. We’d like to ask a few questions of our own, though, if you’re alright with that?” JJ asks. 

Quinn sighs and nods, letting them into her apartment. “So?” 

“I know this hard for you,” Luke sympathizes. 

“Oh, do you?” Quinn snaps, and then pinches the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. It’s just- Our dad died a few months ago. He was all we had left and now…” She trails off, gazing blankly out her window. 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” JJ says softly. “We know this is painful, but anything you tell us can help us find your sister.”

She shrugs, rolling her eyes to stave off tears. “She was quiet, you know? I was always the impulsive one growing up. She was the adult, the mature one.”

Luke’s phone rings, and he glances at the caller ID before excusing himself. JJ smiles at Quinn. “Did Daisy tell you about any plans she had that day? Anything she was looking forward to?”

“No. We were supposed to meet to go see a movie at nine o’clock, and she never showed. She wouldn’t bail on me like that. Not without at least calling me ahead of time.”

Luke walks back over. “Quinn, did your sister ever gamble?”

Her eyebrows knit together. “No! No, she- she doesn’t gamble. She’s too careful for that.” 

He looks at JJ. “Our technical analyst found out she has a lot of debt racked up. Debt from gambling.”

Quinn shakes her head. “No… No, that’s- that’s impossible.”

“It looks like she used her debit card to withdraw two thousand dollars from an ATM around six PM on the night you reported her missing,” he tells her. To JJ he says, “Garcia found something. Emily wants us to check something out.”

“What’s going on?” Quinn demands. “What’s happening?”

“There… may have been a break in the case,” JJ says slowly. “We’ll keep you updated, Quinn.”

Quinn visibly deflates. “She’s- Daisy is all I have left. Please, you have to find her alive.”

JJ lays her hand over Quinn’s. “We’ll do our best.” She squeezes her hand, and then her and Luke head back to the car. “What’d they find?”

Luke starts the car and speeds off. “Garcia found out all the victims went to a casino before they disappeared. Tara and Matt confirmed with Beth and Poppy that Annabelle and Ruth often frequented Westgate Casino before they were killed. Credit card reports put Jamie Ryce there as well, and the bachelorette party she was with confirmed that when Emily called some of the girls. And the ATM Daisy got that cash from?”

“Right outside the casino,” JJ finishes. “So that’s where we’re going?”

“Yep. Emily wants us to talk to some employees there, see if any customers or other employees stand out in their minds.” 

She nods, and watches as dilapidated apartment buildings give way to flashing neon signs. Even though it’s barely two in the afternoon, the strip is bustling with people. Las Vegas is ready for a sinful summer, and if they don’t catch the killer soon, he’ll have plenty of victims to choose from. The clock is still ticking, and she can feel the pressure mounting.

* * *

JJ turns her body just in time to avoid being bowled over by a large man and the woman hanging off his arm. Ahead of her, Luke forges a path towards the office of the manager on duty the security guards at the front of Westgate Casino had pointed them to. The casino is loud, bright, and crowded for the afternoon. It obviously caters to all sorts of people, from high rollers to tourists to gambling addicts. JJ can barely hear herself think over all the noise, but the crowd begins to thin out the closer they get to the office. Luke knocks sharply on the manager’s door and after a moment he pushes it open. The manager, Carl Bridges according to his name plate, is an older man with a bald spot and sweat stains, and he looks up from the papers on his desk when Luke and JJ step inside. “Hey, hey, hey! No customers back here.”

They flash their badges. “Alright if we ask you a couple of questions?” Luke asks. 

Mr. Bridges’ face pales. “Something wrong?”

“We’re investigating the murders that have been happening recently, Mr. Bridges. I’m sure you’ve heard about them,” JJ says smoothly. 

“Who hasn’t? They’re all over the news.”

“Are you familiar with the regulars?” Luke asks him.

“Not really, I just recognize the kind. You can spot a tourist from a mile away. Is the killer a gambler?”

“We have reason to believe each of the victims was at Westgate before they were abducted,” Luke says, ignoring the manager’s question. 

Mr. Bridges’ eyes go wide. “You think someone here killed those girls?”

“Possibly. The killer may also just be using your casino as a hunting ground,” JJ explains. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. This ain’t my casino. I just run the floor most days of the week in the evenings. I hardly ever even leave my office. The employees come get me if they need me. I normally just work on paperwork.”

“Would it be alright if we talked to some of your employees?” Luke asks. 

“Talk to whoever you need to, but don’t distract the dealers on the floor. They need to keep an eye out for cheating and having feds crawling around the tables might make some customers uneasy. If you need to talk to any of them, try looking for them in the breakroom. It’s just outside my office and to the right.”

Luke hands the manager his card. “Thank you for cooperating. If you notice anybody out of the ordinary or think of anything else that might help us, give me a call.”

Mr. Bridges nods, and Luke and JJ show themselves out. “Let’s hit up the dealers, bartenders, and security guards,” JJ says. “They probably see most of the people that come through here, meaning they could be our unsub or they’ve seen him at some point.”

“I’ll talk to the bartenders and security guards if you wanna head to the break room and talk to any dealers that might be back there,” Luke tells her. 

She nods and they split up. JJ is glad Luke offered to talk to the bartenders and security guards. She doesn’t want to try and force her way through to the front of the casino right now. She finds the break room easily enough, and the door is slightly ajar. She hears several people talking inside, but the talking stops when she pushes the door open fully and steps inside. The break room is small, but sports a table, a microwave, a fridge, and a vending machine. The four people in the room stare at her. “I’m Agent Jareau with the FBI. Is it okay if I ask you guys some questions?”

“Is it about the murders?” a man sitting at the table asks, face eager. 

“Oliver, for fuck’s sake, have some class,” the black woman sitting across from him chides. She takes a bite of the apple in her hand. “I don’t know how much help we can be. We don’t know any of those women.”

“Are you guys all dealers?” JJ asks, taking in their matching uniforms. 

“Yeah,” the man who must be Oliver answers. “Desiree normally works Blackjack.” He points to the woman across from him. “Ian and I deal poker,” a nod towards the man writing in a journal by the microwave, “and Finn works craps.” Finn waves from near the vending machines. 

JJ adds all their names to a note in her phone. “Do you guys ever rotate what games you deal?” 

“Sure,” Finn says. “I’m actually dealing Blackjack tonight.”

“So you guys see a lot of regulars?”

“You start to recognize a few faces after a while,” Desiree says. “Couldn’t tell you names though.”

“I’m shit at recognizing people,” Oliver adds, and then snaps his fingers. “Damn, you should talk to Vincent! He never forgets anybody.”

JJ lifts one eyebrow. “Is he a dealer, too?”

“He started back in February,” Desiree tells her. “He used to come here to gamble, though, before he was hired. I remember him because he was _really_ good. I thought he had like a corporate job or something, with how well-dressed he was and everything, so I was surprised when he started working with us.”

“He’s got this weird ass memory,” Finn explains. “It’s like, he can’t ever forget anything. I was talking about some play my girlfriend took me to see once, and I was trying to remember this one line and Vincent just… He recited basically the whole scene from memory. Said he had read the play once in _high school_ and he just knew the whole thing. Dude’s freaky with things like that.”

_Sounds like someone I know_ , she thinks. “What’s his name?” JJ asks. 

“Vincent Lachlin,” says Desiree. 

JJ sends the name to Garcia. “Has anybody you guys work with recently gone through a major break up? Maybe they didn’t come out so well in the end?”

“Nobody I can think of,” Desiree replies. 

“Can you guys think of any regulars that stand out? Maybe they made you a bit uneasy, put you on edge a little bit? Perhaps they watched some of the women a little too closely?”

Ian speaks up for the first time. “If we notice anybody like that, we just alert security and they keep an eye out. They handle it from there. We get a lot of creeps through here. Excuse me. Restroom.” He slides past JJ and limps out the door. 

“Thanks guys. You’ve been a lot of help. If you think of anything else, don’t be afraid to call me.” She hands them each one of her cards and then walks out just as her phone begins buzzing in her pocket. “Hey, Penelope.” She sticks to the edge of the crowd and begins making her way towards the bar. 

“Jayje, that name you sent me, Vincent Lachlin? Kind of fishy,” Garcai starts in without preamble.

“Fishy? How? Could he be our unsub?”

“Mmm, maybe. He doesn’t own a home—at least not one I can find—just rents an apartment. But this is the weird thing: it’s like he didn’t exist before last year. There’s nothing. No prior addresses, no school record of any kind despite the GED he has. I mean, even if he was homeschooled there would be a record of that _somewhere_. And the way he was hired at Westgate smells. All employees there have to have a background check done. There wasn’t one for him. I mean, there’s a record of him getting the formal dealer training needed to work as a dealer, but that’s essentially the only official record I have for him. How did you get this name?”

JJ spots Luke still talking with some bartenders and makes her way towards him. “His coworkers said he’d be our best bet for finding anyone who stands out. They told me that he never forgets a face. None of them seemed wary of him. They all seem to get along. But one woman did say she thought it was weird he wanted to work as a dealer. Apparently he used to come to this casino a lot to gamble before he got hired.”

“That would explain why there’s no prior employment record for him either. Maybe he just made his money gambling. Jayje, I can’t even find a photo ID for this guy. There’s none in Nevada state records or any other state. Something is seriously wrong with the dude.”

“I’m not arguing with you there. Something stinks. Do you at least have an address?”

“That I managed to get. I’m sending it to your phone now. Please don’t go alone.”

She taps Luke on the shoulder. “I won’t. I’m bringing Luke with me. Tell the rest of the team where we’re heading.”

“Of course, my dear. Be safe.”

“Always. Bye, Penelope.”

“Bye-bye.”

Luke nods towards the exit and JJ follows as he tells her, “Bartenders and security guards didn’t give me anything useful. You got something?”

“Yeah. The dealers told me one of their coworkers is great with faces and remembering people. They said he’d be the one most likely able to help us out. He’s a bit fishy though, as Garcia said.” 

“Fishy how?” Luke prods.

“There’s no record of him existing before last year.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. Let’s go check him out.”

Vincent’s apartment building isn’t far from the casino, about a ten minute drive. The building has definitely seen better days and it looks like one stiff breeze would blow it over. Inside, it smells like mildew and urine. The elevator is out of order, naturally, so Luke and JJ take the elevator to the fifth floor and look for apartment 512. JJ raps on the door twice. A young woman, probably in her mid-twenties, opens the door. “Can I help you?”

They show her their badges. “We’re looking for Vincent Lachlin,” JJ tells her.

The woman’s eyes go wide. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“No trouble. We think he might be able to help us with our investigation,” Luke assures. 

She opens the door wider to let them in. “He’s in the shower right now. Can I get you guys anything to drink?”

“Coffee, if you have it,” Luke says. 

“Of course we have it. I swear, Vincent’s blood is mostly coffee. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him drink water. I’m Reina, by the way.” She gestures to the couch shoved in the corner and then goes about making the coffee. 

“Agents Alvez and Jareau. Are you his girlfriend?” asks JJ.

Reina snorts. “No, his best friend. I live one floor below him in 412.” She hands them their cups of coffee and sits on the foot of the bed opposite the couch. “What do you guys want with Vince?”

“His coworkers told us he might be able to help us,” Luke explains. 

She nods. “He’s weirdly smart. Like, he doesn’t look like someone you’d expect to be smart, you know? I thought he was a high school dropout for a long time. Turns out he’s got a few PhDs.” She points to the overflowing bookcases on the other wall. “Like, he’s read all of those books. And he has them memorized. I can’t remember the last time I even finished a book.” 

Luke and JJ exchange a look. Garcia had said there was no school record for Vincent. Maybe he had lied to Reina. 

The water shuts off in the bathroom, pipes groaning. A few moments later, the bathroom door opens, steam spilling out, and the three of them turn to look. “Reina, was someone at the door?” Vincent Lachlin says, using his towel to dry his hair, and JJ’s world tilts upside down. 

Spencer stands in the doorway, damp towel hanging limply from his hand. He looks nothing like the man JJ knows. He’s wearing dark blue jeans that hang low on his hips. A light gray v-neck clings to his wet skin and he’s wearing a thin golden chain around his neck. His hair curls at the nape of his neck, a little bit longer than it was when JJ last saw him. He’s got light stubble on his jaw and his socks don’t match. He’s looking at JJ like he wants to melt into the floor. 

Reina speaks first, breaking the tense silence. “Vince, these guys are from the FBI. They think you might be able to help them.” 

She snaps JJ out of her daze, and she stands up so quickly her coffee spills onto the carpet. “Spencer?”

Spencer swallows and shifts his weight from side to side, but doesn’t say anything. 

JJ can’t believe it. They’ve been looking for Spencer for over a year and he was in Vegas the whole time. The team had figured he would get as far away as possible from anything that reminded him of his mom, which is probably why he came here in the first place. He knew it would be the last place they would all look. JJ strides over to him, grabs him by the arms, and holds him at arm’s length. She doesn’t see any visible injuries, and he looks good. Different, so, so different, but good. Healthy, even. There are no bags under his eyes and he’s not as thin as he once was. She grips his shirt sleeves and pulls him into a hug. 

Spencer hesitates for a moment, but then drops his towel and wraps one arm around her waist and cradles the back of her head with his other hand. He smells like clean soap, mint, and, oddly enough, cigarettes. His body is warm from the shower, and still slightly damp, but JJ doesn’t care. She doesn’t know how long they stand there for, just holding each other, but eventually reality comes crashing back down and she pulls back, anger rushing in so quickly it makes her lightheaded. 

“What the _fuck_ , Spencer?” she screams. “You couldn’t send a goddamn postcard or any indication you were even alive? Not a single phone call? We looked for you for months! Months, Spencer! We’re still looking for you! I cried every night for three fucking months! I had to tell Henry and Michael that we couldn’t find you and didn’t know when you’d be back. They were devastated! You son a bitch!”

Spencer stares at the ground and takes the abuse. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “JJ, I-” He stops and looks frantically behind her. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t-”

“We could have helped you. We were all there for you and you just left. We needed you!” she interrupts, tears streaming down her face. “Why would you leave? After everything-” JJ chokes on her words, but continues. “After everything we’ve all been through together, after we all lost Stephen and your mom… Why would you leave?”

His eyes dart behind her again and he chews his lower lip. His eyes are bright with unshed tears. “Please,” he whispers. 

The storm settles in JJ at his pleading, but only for the moment. “Are you okay?”

He drags his fingers through his hair. “I’m fine now. I- I’m okay. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.” He looks past JJ again, and then steps around her. 

“Vincent?” Reina says. “What’s going on?” Her hands are curled into fists at her side and JJ watches Spencer’s face crumple. 

“Reina. Reina, _fuck_ , I-”

“Who’s Spencer?” she demands. “Why is she calling you Spencer?”

“That’s- Reina, fuck. That’s my name. My real name.”

“Your real name? You lied to me?”

“I didn’t- Okay, I lied about my name, but everything else I told you-”

“You expect me to believe anything you say to me now?” she hisses. Her voice is thick, eyes watering. JJ gets the impression she does not cry often. “You’ve been my best friend for over a year and you never once thought about telling me the truth?”

“I- I couldn’t. It was-”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” she barks harshly. Spencer snaps his mouth shut. “That’s what I thought.” She heads for the door. “Don’t speak to me ever again.”

JJ watches Spencer reach out for her, an aborted plea, but Reina slams the door behind her and Spencer falls apart.

* * *

Spencer watches the door slam behind Reina. With it, another piece of him flecks off. He wants to run after her, explain every single time he thought about telling her the truth, but he knows that this has driven a wedge between them. He’s not sure what it will take to fix it. He’s suddenly furious with Luke and JJ for exposing his secret. He knows this is the worst possible way for Reina to find out. Had he told her himself, maybe he could have salvaged some of their friendship. Now he has nothing. Without thinking, he pulls his hand back and puts it through the flimsy drywall, connecting solidly with a stud. His arm vibrates and his nerves scream, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t make a sound. His neighbor starts shouting at him and he turns around to face Luke and JJ. 

“How did you find me?” he demands, voice hard. His hand throbs in time with his heart. 

“We didn’t,” Luke says when JJ remains silent, staring at him in shock. “We’re investigating the murders that have been happening. We went to Westgate to see if anybody could think of any customers or employees who stood out, and some of the dealers told JJ that we should find a guy named Vincent Lachlin. Apparently he can remember names and faces better than anyone.” He looks down at Spencer’s hand. “Reid, your hand is bleeding.” 

He looks at his knuckles. A thin trickle of blood is dripping down his hand. He swears under his breath and goes to the kitchen sink. As he starts rinsing the blood off under cool water, he says, “What’s Westgate have to do with the murders?”

“Each victim was there before they disappeared,” Luke explains. 

Spencer remembers seeing the first two victims, the prostitutes, hanging around outside the casino. He never saw Jamie Ryce and Kendall Watson at Westgate, though, which makes sense. He only sees a fraction of the customers that go through the casino. There’s no way he could ever see them all. “So the unsub is most likely an employee or a regular,” Spencer fills in, falling easily back into old routines. He shuts the water off and goes to his freezer to grab a bag of peas. He wraps the bag in a dish towel and holds it against his hand. “I saw Annabelle and Ruth hanging around sometimes. I never saw Jamie or Kendall, though.”

“Okay, enough shop talk,” Luke snaps angrily. “The hell are you doing hiding in Vegas as a dealer at a casino?”

“I wasn’t always a dealer,” he protests, skin prickling at Luke’s word choice. He wasn’t _hiding_ . He doesn't have a word for what he was doing, but he definitely wasn’t hiding. Spencer knows they want answers, but he doesn’t have the ones they want to hear. He knows what they think; they think he ran because it was all too much and he’s always hidden from his emotions. They’re partially right. He couldn’t stay. Everything was too raw and painful. He wasn’t in the right headspace to go back to the BAU after everything that happened and he didn’t want to expose his team to the person he had become. He had liked choking Cat. He had liked poisoning those inmates. There was no way he could stay around his team after he realized that because they would eventually realize it, too. So he left to protect them. He wasn’t hiding. He was _protecting_ them because he didn’t want them to eventually have to chase him down, but it turns out that was inevitable anyway. 

“You know what I mean, Reid.”

He sighs and leans against his kitchen counter. A half truth. He can give them a half truth. “After being in prison… I don’t know. Something changed.”

“Yeah, you were in _prison_. Of course something changed.” 

“No, you don’t get it,” he says, frustrated. 

“So enlighten us, Spence,” JJ finally says and she sounds angry again despite using the familiar nickname. 

He plays with the chain around his neck. Of course they wouldn’t be satisfied with his half truth. “It was so easy before, hunting down these monsters, because there was no way I had anything in common with them. Not the true psychopaths, anyway. And then I poisoned that supply.” He works his jaw back and forth. “And I saw the people I put in the infirmary.”

“Spencer-” JJ starts.

“Don’t,” he bites. “You told me that you never enjoy killing unsubs when you have to. Don’t lie to me.”

“So… what? You’re protecting us from you?” Luke asks. “That’s gotta be the stupidest-”

“I did what was right!” he shouts, slamming his hand on the counter. His flinches and bites his tongue to keep from crying out. His hand is definitely broken. Again. At least this time he can go to an actual hospital to have it looked at since the cat is out of the bag. His hands shake. He drops the bag of peas in the sink and walks over to his nightstand. He opens the top drawer and digs around for his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He sticks a cigarette between his teeth and lets it dangle there he strides across the room to open the window. 

“Since when do you smoke?” JJ demands. 

Spencer lights the cigarette and takes a deep inhale, letting the smoke coat his lungs. He can already feel the initial nicotine rush as he breathes the smoke back out. “It was this or get back on dilaudid.” 

“Those’ll give you cancer,” she says dryly. 

“Ninety percent of lung cancer victims are smokers,” he says, the statistic falling easily from his lips as he flicks ash into the ashtray on his windowsill. Reina had bought the tray for him. It was custom made from some website. The artist had taken pages from a book and set them in resin in the mold of an ashtray. “Most smokers die from other causes, like heart disease or a stroke, likely caused by smoking. Dilaudid could theoretically kill me much faster. I could OD or get a bad batch from the streets. I’ll take my chances with lung cancer.” 

“Are you purposefully trying to kill yourself?” JJ retorts. 

“I have a gun,” he answers tartly. “If I wanted to kill myself I have the means to do so easily, and I haven’t.”

“Reid, cut the act,” Luke snarls. “We’ve all got baggage. What makes you think yours is so special?”

Spencer has spent a lot of time rationalizing what he did and he knows he was right, so he says, “I was always told I was special,” and stubs out the last of his cigarette. “Unless I can help you guys with anything pertaining to the case, I’m gonna have to ask you guys to leave.”

“Leave? Spencer, are you fucking insane?” JJ yells. “I’ve spent the last _year_ looking for you, and now I’m not gonna let you out of my fucking sight. You’ve become a person of interest in this case. Your coworkers say you’re the best with recognizing faces and I know that’s true, so you’re gonna come down to the station and look at the photo of our missing woman and tell us if you recognize her. And after that, we’re gonna talk some more—all of us, the whole team—and you’re gonna tell us everything.”

“You don’t control what I do, JJ,” he hisses. 

“Don’t make me bring you into the station in cuffs.”

“On what charge?”

“Possession of a firearm without a license. It doesn’t belong to you, _Vincent_. It belongs to a former federal agent.”

He clenches his jaw, teeth grinding together. If JJ wants to play like this, so can he. He shoves his cigarettes and lighter into his front pocket and then grabs his phone from where it’s charging on his nightstand, slipping it into his back pocket. Then, he holds his wrists out and says, “Cuff me then.”

* * *

The interrogation room is cold and the metal seat against his back does nothing to stop the goosebumps from prickling on his skin. His left hand is cuffed to the table, right hand resting on his thigh. It still aches, a dull throb grounding him to the present. He knows the entire team is on the other side of the mirror in front of him, watching. If Spencer is being honest, he doesn’t know why he’s being so difficult. He so desperately wants to have his family back, wants everything to go back to how it was. He knows that’s not possible and doesn’t want to give himself false hope, so he might as well burn all the bridges he can. Self destruct. Apoptosis. He closes his eyes and leans back in the chair. The last vestiges of who he was breaks away, crumbling. All that’s left now is to rebuild. If the team really wants him back, they’ll have to deal with who he is now. 

With his broken hand, Spencer reaches into his pocket, where Luke and JJ mercifully left his cigarettes and lighter. He’s quick to light up, uncaring of whether he’s allowed to smoke in the interrogation room or not. He keeps steady eye contact with the one-way mirror as he smokes. It’s when he’s finishing up with the cigarette that the door opens, and Emily walks in. 

Some part of Spencer wants to spring up and engulf her in a hug. His legs twitch, but another part of him forces him to remain still, to pull at the anger of losing Reina and project it onto Emily and everyone else. “Hello, Emily,” he says calmly. 

“Hello, Reid,” she says and Spencer can see the tension in her shoulders. But Emily has always been put together during situations like this, only allowing herself to all apart when she’s around people she trusts. Spencer remembers her begging him to stay with her as Luke chased down Peter Lewis. She had fallen in his arms, exhaustion winning over. Now, that trust is no longer there, not the way it used to be. She’s guarded and unsure and Spencer can’t blame her. She licks her lips. “I’m glad you’re doing well.”

He shrugs. He can see that she wants to say something—anything—but the desire to find the unsub wins out, and she slides a photo across the table to him. “Is this the missing woman?” he asks, picking up the photo. She looks like the other victims, with dark hair and dark eyes, but something about her does seem familiar to Spencer. He frowns at the photo and searches his mind for where he knows her from. 

A few days ago, she sat down at Spencer’s Blackjack table. He remembers her being careful with her bets, never hitting when her cards added to more than seventeen, just like how the dealer plays. She had been timid in her approach and it cost her. Taking risks is necessary in Blackjack because you’re playing against probability. 

“She came to my table a few days ago, on Thursday,” he tells Emily. “I remember her.”

“Was she with anyone?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Was anybody watching her?” Emily presses.

Spencer closes his eyes. The woman only played a few rounds. Her cautious nature caused her to lose money rather quickly and she left somewhat angrily. In the crowd, a man moved. Spencer couldn’t see his face, but he was tall and broad. He walked funny, leaning towards the left side. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and he followed the woman at a distance before they both disappeared into the crowd. 

“A customer, I think, but he looked familiar.”

“Could you describe him to a sketch artist?”

“No, I never saw his face.” It’s bugging him, how familiar the man seemed, and yet Spencer can’t place him. 

“Thank you, Spencer. You know this helps.” Emily grabs the photo of the missing woman and pauses. “I’ve missed you.” 

He squeezes his left hand into a fist. “What’s her name?” he says in lieu of anything else. “The missing woman.” 

“Daisy MacDonald,” she answers. “She’s twenty-five.”

Spencer nods. “I hope you find her.” 

Something else is on the tip of Emily’s tongue. He can see it rolling around in her mouth, begging to be said. He waits. And then, “Will you come back?”

He decides to play dumb. “To the station?”

Emily glares at him, and Spencer feels the fight leave him. 

“I don’t know,” he says shakily. “So much has changed.”

“We can deal with change.”

“I can’t.” 

Emily glances at the mirror behind her. “Whatever your reasons for leaving, I’m sure I can understand them better than anyone. I’m not going to cast stones in a glass house. I’m not gonna force an explanation from you. If you don’t wanna tell any of us why you left, that’s fine. I think you should tell at least one of us, but I can’t make you.” She pulls the keys to the handcuffs out of her pocket and hands them to him. “I know I can’t force you to leave Vegas either. If you stay when we leave, just promise you’ll stay in touch.” 

Spencer unlocks the cuffs with a shaky hand. Now that the adrenaline has faded, the pain in his right hand is nearly unbearable. He looks up at Emily. She’s pleading with him, offering him an olive branch. He’d be foolish not to take it, so he says, “Okay.” 

“Thank you,” she whispers and steps forward. “Can I?”

He nods, and then Emily is hugging him, squeezing him tight around the waist. He takes a moment to push his face into her shoulder, relishing the human contact. Reina isn’t much of a hugger, and she’s the only person in the city Spencer would even consider letting that close, so it’s been a long time since he’s had something like this. Hugging JJ back in his apartment had felt like coming home. He forces himself to pull back first and wipes at his eyes. “I am sorry,” he tells her. 

“I know you are, Reid.” She nods at the mirror. “I think you should tell them that.”

Spencer would rather jump out a window than face his old team, but he knows it has to be done eventually. He had only caught a glimpse of them on the other side of the station as Luke and JJ hauled him in wearing handcuffs, and he had avoided looking at any of them too closely. Shame begins to creep in, as powerful as what he felt when he was tied naked to that goal post when he was twelve. His fingers twitch and he shoves his left hand in his pocket, fingering the cigarette box there.

“Oh, and Reid?” He looks up from the floor. “Marlboros? Really?”

“JJ already gave me the cancer spiel.”

“I was gonna say I prefer Mavericks.”

A grin spreads across his face. “I should have known.” 

Emily shrugs. “Come on. Let’s face the music.”

* * *

JJ finds a secluded corner of the precinct to call Will. She normally doesn’t call during cases, so Will picks up quickly and says immediately, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she tells him, but her voice cracks.

“JJ, what’s wrong?” he asks softly.

“We found him, Will. He was in Vegas the whole time.” She sits down on a wobbly wooden chair and pulls her knees to her chest. 

“Who?”

“Spencer.” She blinks back tears, unwilling to cry despite it all. She’s exhausted from the rollercoaster of emotions she’s been on today, from the frustration of having a time constraint with the case, to the shock of finding Spencer, to the pure joy of being reunited, to anger, and then to disbelief. When she and Luke had brought Spencer into the station, cuffed but compliant, she had wanted to lock him in the interrogation room with her and stay there until he gave her some answers. Instead, she just locked him to the table and left without another word. The rest of the team was already gathered outside the interrogation room, waiting. 

“Was that Reid?” Tara had asked first, squinting through the one-way mirror. “Holy shit.”

“What the hell happened?” Rossi demanded, eyes glued to Spencer. The team watched in silence as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. 

Luke shook his head. “We went to Westgate to ask some of the employees if they noticed anyone odd, a coworker or a regular customer, and some of the dealers told JJ that if they wanted some concrete information, we should find this guy named Vincent Lachlin.”

“They told me he never forgets a face and that he would be our best bet, so Garcia gave us an address and we went there.” JJ saw Spencer take a drag from the cigarette, his second in as many hours. “Turns out Vincent Lachlin is Spencer. He’s been here the whole time.”

“So he’s been a dealer in a Las Vegas casino for an entire year?” Matt asked. 

“Not always. He didn’t tell us what he did before getting this job, but from what we can tell, he has been here for the whole year,” Luke explained, arms crossed over his chest. “Someone should call Garcia.” He pulled out his phone and walked away. 

“Since when does he smoke?” Rossi muttered. 

Emily had been watching Spencer closely, arms folded and face pensive. “I’m going to talk to him,” she told the team. “Our first priority right now is finding Daisy, and Spencer is our best lead at the moment. If he’s been working at Westgate for a while, chances are he’s run into our unsub. If he has any useful information pertaining to the case, I’ll get it from him. I know we all want to wring him for answers, but look at him.” Spencer flicked ashes onto the floor, his posture closed off and eyebrows drawn. “He’s on the defensive. If we push, he’ll close up more. We’ve waited a whole year to find him, we can wait a little bit longer. We need to find Daisy alive.”

JJ felt the ripple that went through the team. They all wanted to protest, but knew that a woman’s life was in danger. As much as they cared about Spencer, now that they knew he was safe, they could focus entirely on the case. As much as it pained them all, they could wait a little longer.

“JJ?” Will says over the phone, yanking her back to the present. “Jayje, you found Reid?”

The tears fall and she sucks in a sharp breath. “Yeah. We did.”

“What? How? Is he alright?”

“He’s fine, at least physically. I mean… He broke his hand punching a wall. Matt took him to the ER. I- I can’t read him like I used to. He’s different. Angrier.” She shakes her head. “Will, how can we even begin to fix this?”

“One day at a time, Jayje. Just like anything else,” he says. “You’ll get there. You always do.”

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

“At least you know where he is now and that he’s alive. That’s better than what we had before.” Will sighs. “Nothing about this is gonna be easy.” 

“It never is with us, is it?” she says dryly. 

Not only do Spencer and JJ have to restore the friendship they had, JJ has to deal with old feelings bubbling to the surface. Before—before prison and Cat Adams and Peter Lewis—JJ used to come home and lay in bed next to Will and guilt would cover her like a well-worn blanket. She would lay in bed next to her husband, the father of her kids, and think about Spencer. She would think about her imagined futures with Spencer, ones where Will was conspicuously absent. And then he left. The familiar guilt lifted a little bit, and JJ could breathe just a little easier at night. Now it’s all back. 

“Do you want me to tell the boys?” Will asks. 

She chews her lip. “Not yet. I can’t tell what’s going to happen once we solve this case and if we tell Henry and Spence doesn’t come back… he’ll be devastated.”

“Okay.” A pause. “JJ, it’s gonna be okay.”

“I really hope so.”

“I love you.”

She leans her head against the wall behind her, eyes sliding shut. “Yeah, you too.” She ends the call and squeezes her phone in her hand, wanting nothing more than to crush it.

* * *

Spencer rummages through his satchel at work, looking for his ibuprofen. Matt had taken him to the ER last night to have his hand looked at once everything had calmed down. Spencer had been passed around and hugged by every team member, and Garcia had talked his ear off over Luke’s phone. Emily must have said something to them, because nobody asked him any questions about why he left, just what he had been doing the whole time. He answered their questions truthfully, but eventually cut them off when the pain in his hand got to be too much. That was when Emily told Matt to take him to the hospital. He knocks his blue cast against his locker door, hissing when the pain radiates up his arm. 

“Hey, Vincent, what’s- Whoa!” Oliver exclaims. “What happened to your hand?”

“Broke it,” he mumbles as he finds his bottle of painkillers in his bag. He dumps two pills into his mouth and swallows them dry, wincing. 

“How?” 

“Punched a wall.”

“White boys,” Desiree mutters, opening her locker next to Spencer. “What happened? Thirteen-year-old beat you in Call of Duty?”

Spencer frowns. “What’s Call of Duty?”

“Dude, seriously?” Oliver says. 

He hangs his bag in his locker and shuts it, then adjusts his shirt cuff over his cast. “Is it a game?”

“A fantastic video game!”

“I don’t play video games,” Spencer says. 

“Yeah, I figured,” Desiree teases. “So how’s your girlfriend?”

He sighs. “Reina isn’t my girlfriend.”

Ian walks in, hands gripping his backpack straps tight. Spencer moves aside so he can get to his locker. Desiree grins. “Suuuuure.”

“Are you talking about the girl who drops him off at work sometimes?” Ian asks.

“She’s not my girlfriend!” he repeats. “She’s my friend. Or… she was.” He digs his nails into the palm of his cast. 

“Trouble in paradise?” Finn says, popping up behind Ian’s locker door. 

“We got in a fight,” he mumbles. He checks his watch. He’s got just enough time for a cigarette before he needs to head to his table for the night. “I’m going to smoke.”

“I’ll come with,” Ian says, dropping a journal into his locker and grabbing his pack of cigarettes. Spencer prickles at the thought of Ian joining him, but says nothing. They walk out to the back of the building where an emergency exit door is always propped open so employees can go out and smoke. Spencer holds the door open wider for Ian as he limps through. “Sorry I move so slow,” Ian laughs. 

“It’s alright,” Spencer says and accepts the cigarette Ian hands him. “Thanks. What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”

He shakes his head, lighting his own cigarette and then Spencer’s. “I don’t mind. I played ball in college at Ohio State. When I was twenty-one, I got in a car accident, right at the beginning of my junior year. Lost my full ride and had to move back home.” He blows smoke out his nose, jaw set. “What’s the deal with you and your friend, uh, Rebecca? She lives in your building, doesn’t she?”

“Reina. And yeah, she does.” Spencer taps the ash off the end of his cigarette. “We… got in a fight. I lied to her about something, something big, and I… I really don’t know how to fix it.”

“That how you broke your hand?” he asks, pointing at Spencer’s cast. “Punching a wall after the fight?”

He looks down at his cast and wiggles his fingers. “Yeah.”

“I did the same thing after my girl left me. Women make men do crazy things,” he chuckles. “So Reina isn’t your girl?”

He shakes his head. “No. No, she’s my… my best friend. More like a sister, really.” He takes a deep inhale and holds the smoke in until it hurts, then blows it out. 

“In my experience, just admitting you’re wrong is the best thing you can do with women. They like to know they’re always right.”

“I guess.” Spencer drops the butt of his cigarette into the ash urn. “I’m going to give her some time to cool off first. She was really angry. She said she never wanted to see me again.”

Ian hisses. “That’s rough, man. I’m sorry.” He pauses. “Hey, did those FBI agents ever get a hold of you?”

He tenses. “Yeah… How’d you know?”

“Some hot agent came and asked us a bunch of questions. Desiree gave her your name.”

Spencer relaxes. “They asked me a few questions.”

“Like what?”

“If I recognized the missing woman. Apparently all the victims came here before they disappeared.”

“That’s what those agents said. Did you know her? The woman? You’re freaky with faces and stuff.”

He nods. “I recognized her.”

“Damn. That’s scary, isn’t it?”

Spencer shrugs. “Not really.”

He claps Spencer on the back. “Our shift is about to start. Let’s head back. And hey, you need help patching that hole in your wall?”

“Probably. I’m sure I can figure it out, though.”

Ian nods. “Okay. Well if you need help…”

“Yeah. I’ll let you know.” Spencer holds the door open for him again, and watches him limp back inside. Something tickles at the back of his mind, but he doesn’t have time to look deeper, because his shift starts and he gets caught up in the hustle of a shift change. By the time things settle and he has time to think, he’s forgotten about it, and his mind focuses instead on how to repair things with Reina.

* * *

JJ is just starting to drift off to sleep when her phone buzzes violently on the bedside table in the hotel room. Tara, who’s in the other bed, stirs. JJ grabs her phone and squints at the caller ID before groaning. “It’s Emily,” she tells Tara as she slides her thumb across the screen to answer it. “What’s up?”

“We found Daisy,” Emily says without preamble.

“Alive?” she asks hopefully and swings her legs over the side of the bed. Tara starts getting up to get dressed, wordlessly putting herself back together to head to the station. 

“No,” Emily answers grimly. 

“Then he’s accelerating. He only had Daisy for what, four days?” She starts hunting down her pants. 

“Rossi and I are heading to the dumpsite now. Garcia should have called Matt and Luke. You guys can ride to the station together.”

“Okay.” She finds her pants and yanks them on.

“And JJ?”

She jams her heel into her right shoe with a grunt. “Mm?”

“Call Spencer. We could really use his help with this one.”

She swallows. 

“Jayje?”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll, uh… I’ll give him a call.”

“Thanks. See you soon. Bye.”

The line goes dead and JJ drops her head into her hands. Tara leans against the bathroom door frame, fixing her sleeve cuffs. “What’d Emily say?”

“That we should call Spencer.”

Tara nods, eyes steady on JJ. “You don’t think we should?”

She shakes her head. “Emily’s right. We could use his help. He’s more familiar with Westgate and it’s patrons and employees. Looking at all the evidence might shake something loose in his head and lead us to our unsub. But he’s not an agent anymore. Bringing him in on the case might compromise everything.” It’s a weak counter argument and she knows it. There’s no way Emily would let Spencer go out into the field, and they can simply say he’s a CI for the FBI. 

“You’re angry with him,” Tara observes. 

“A bit.” But not in the way Tara thinks. JJ is angry at Spencer for the way he makes her feel as well as for leaving without warning. 

“I don’t blame you. All of us are a little mad at him, and we can deal with that later. Right now, we need to stop this guy before he takes another woman, if he hasn’t already.”

JJ nods. “I know. Go find Luke and Matt. I’ll call Spence.” She unlocks her phone and goes to her contacts, pulling up the new number Spencer had given all of them before he left the station with Matt. It’s nearing two in the morning, and JJ doesn’t know if Spencer is at work or sleeping. She hesitates for just a second before dialing his number.

It rings once, twice, and then, “Hello?” He sounds alert for two AM, so he must not have been asleep. 

“Spence?”

“JJ? What’s up?”

“We just found Daisy’s body. Listen, you’re our best shot at finding this guy before he takes someone else. Can you help?” 

“I can try,” Spencer says. “I just got back from work. I can meet you guys at the station.”

“We still haven’t left the hotel. We can pick you up on the way.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“Right, bye.” She ends the call and lets out a sigh of frustration. Despite things cooling off after Spencer confirmed Daisy had been at Westgate, things between the two of them have remained tense. Tara, Matt, and Luke just seem happy to have him back, no matter how much time has passed. Emily and Rossi seem to understand why he ran. JJ, on the other hand… She wants all the answers, and Spencer knows that, but he’s unwilling to give them to her for whatever reason.

There’s a knock on the hotel room door, and Tara sticks her head on. “We’re waiting in the car.”

She nods, grabs her gun, and heads out the door. When she slides into the backseat beside Tara, she tells Luke, “We need to pick up Spencer. Emily wants him to help us on this case since he’s most familiar with Westgate.” 

Luke looks at her in the rearview mirror before putting the car into drive. “Are you okay, JJ?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” she mutters. “I’m fine. I’m glad we found Spencer. Am I allowed to still be angry or is that against the rules?”

“We’re all angry with him,” Tara says. “But that gets us nowhere. We saw how defensive he was earlier. He thinks he did the right thing and he won’t tell us anything if he thinks we’re just going to chastise him for what’s already been done.” 

“I’m pissed with him,” Luke adds. “Like, not even a phone call?”

“I thought I was the only one who was still mad,” she admits. 

The conversation comes to an abrupt end as Luke pulls up outside Spencer’s building. JJ pulls out her phone to text him that they’re there, but stops when she sees someone coming towards the car. She squints out the window and realizes it’s Spencer, wearing loose gray sweats cuffed at the ankles, a hoodie, and a flannel over it. He looks years younger. 

He pulls the door open on JJ’s side, making her scoot to the middle of the backseat. “Hey,” he says quietly. The backseat is small and JJ is pressed between Tara and Spencer, but she only cares about the fact that she’s touching Spencer from shoulder to knee. “What happened?” he asks. 

“Daisy MacDonald’s body was found,” Matt answers. 

“She was only taken four days ago,” Spencer says. “Fuck.”

Luke laughs.

“What?” Spencer says.

“Nothing,” Luke giggles. “It’s funny hearing you swear, genius.”

JJ watches the color climb up Spencer’s cheeks through the rearview mirror, too close to actually turn towards him and watch. 

“Reina doesn’t have much of a filter,” he explains. “I spend so much time with her it’s only natural that I would adopt some of her mannerisms.”

“She a friend?” Matt asks innocently. It’s the question JJ has been aching to ask, but avoided for fear of exposing how she feels. 

“Yeah, my best friend,” he says easily. “Where was Daisy found?”

“A dumpster by 17th and Lewis,” JJ says, reading the information Emily sent her via text. “Emily and Rossi are heading there now to check it out.”

“Do you have a geographical profile yet?”

Luke laughs darkly. “Kind of. I hate doing that shit and I’ve been doing it since you left. I haven’t gotten any better. All the dumpsites are near Westgate, but there’s nowhere else in that general area where he could hold the girls to rape and torture them.”

Spencer skates right over the mention of him leaving. “I can work up a better one when we get to the station. It shouldn’t take me too long.”

When they arrive at the station, Matt is quick to catch Spencer up on everything and show him where all the files on the case are. They spread out through the conference room; Luke and Spencer working together on a geographical profile and Matt, JJ, and Tara going over anything they may have missed in the case. 

Rossi and Emily walk in around three AM. Rossi says, “Dumpsite didn’t tell us what we didn’t already know. But there was a CCTV camera nearby, so we’re having Garcia get that footage and get back to us.”

“So Daisy was killed in the same way?” Spencer asks. 

“Strangled,” Emily replies. 

“Raped?”

“The coroner is still doing his exam, but based on the blood I saw on her inner thighs, it’s a safe bet,” Rossi says. 

“Rohypnol was found in each of the other victims except the first?” Spencer asks as he flips through the files closest to him.

“Yeah. We think he only meant to choke Annabelle Collins to scare her, and then realized he liked it and choked her until she died. He hadn’t been planning on killing her,” Tara says. 

Spencer frowns. “So is he accelerating or did he maybe overdose her?”

“If she OD’ed, why strangle her?” JJ points out.

“Maybe he hadn’t meant to OD her,” Spencer starts. “Rohypnol is a depressant. When mixed with alcohol its effects mimic severe drunkenness, but if you mix it with other depressants, it can slow the heart rate and respiratory rate drastically, leading to oxygen deprivation in the brain and eventually death. It’s possible Daisy was taking another depressant and the unsub didn’t know, and the continued use of Rohypnol caused brain death.”

“Her file says she has bipolar depression,” Matt tells him. 

“Haldol is commonly used to treat BPD,” he says. “She may have been taking that. He might have strangled her to keep the ritual.”

“We won’t know the COD until the coroner gets back to us,” Emily says. 

“Do you have a list of suspects?”

Rossi shakes his head. “We had Garcia go through employment records at Westgate, looking for anyone who owns or rents a home in their late-twenties to mid-thirties. She’s looking at customer records too, but if the unsub was a customer and paid in cash, there’d be no record of him. The list was too long without any more parameters. We think he went through a messy breakup, since all the victims look alike.”

Spencer nods and turns back to the map he and Luke are working on. JJ watches his back for a moment, before looking back at the coroner’s reports on the previous victims. They keep working with what they have, but their frustration grows. When the conference phone rings, Emily is quick to answer it. Garcia’s voice rings out through the conference room.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I am still reeling over this. What’re the odds we find Spencer completely by chance? And he’s in Vegas of all places! I never even thought to look there! I figured he’d get as far away from any memories of his mom as possible. I mean, that’s kind of what I did when my parents died. I went on a bender first, of course, but from what you guys have told me, he’s gone off the deep end too! I mean, smoking? I can’t imagine Spencer smoking. It almost makes him look cool, except for the whole cancer thing. And working as a dealer? I never could have guessed that. Do you think he gets bored? I mean, with a brain like his I can’t imagine dealing is very fun. I thought he’d get a job teaching or something, maybe start working on another PhD, but I guess he would have had to put his name on record and then I would have found him so maybe that’s why he didn’t-”

“Garcia,” Spencer interrupts. “I’m right here.”

“Oh,” she says, voice small. 

“Did you find anything on the CCTV?” he asks. 

“Right, uh. So the dumpster where Daisy was found is in the bottom corner of the frame, but you can see the front end of a red car pull up and a man dressed in all black dump her body. I couldn’t pull plates because I couldn’t see them. But I did narrow my search to employees and customers at Westgate who own red cars and I have a list of ten possible suspects, which is down from twenty-five. I think three look good for it.”

“Why’s that?” Luke asks. 

“Well, Manny Diaz and Frank Jameson went through some messy divorces. I had to do some major stalking on the third guy, Ian Matthews, and I found out his girlfriend left him about five years ago. He was not quiet about it on his social media after she left. Diaz and Jameson have criminal records. Diaz has charges for drug possession and assault. He fought a guy in a bar. Jameson was booked on assault of a minor. Looks like he beat up his younger sister’s bully. Matthews doesn’t have a record, but again, after some digging, I found out his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Gordon, pressed assault charges on him that she later dropped.”

“Send us everything you have on them, Penelope. You did great.”

“Thank you, my lovely. And Spencer?”

Spencer licks his lips. “Yeah?”

“I am so mad at you,” she says harshly, before adding more softly, “but I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you,” he whispers, and the call ends. A moment later, the iPads ding with the files Garcia has sent them. Spencer leans over JJ to read off of hers. “I know all these guys.” JJ is acutely aware of Spencer behind her. His open flannel is brushing against her arm, causing goosebumps to pimple across her skin. He points to the name Ian Matthews. “He’s a dealer.” 

JJ opens his file and looks at the picture of him. “I talked to him at Westgate. He was quiet.” She watches Spencer frown in the reflection of the iPad. “What is it?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I… It’s nothing. Read off their addresses to me. I’ll mark them on the map.” JJ rattles them off, and Spencer puts flags on them. They’re all outside the radius he and Luke outlined. He frowns. “Weird.” 

“What?” Matt asks. 

“None of their houses are within the comfort zone. It would make sense that they should be, or at least nearby, but they’re not.”

“It’s possible he just keeps them somewhere else, somewhere private,” Rossi points out. “I mean, that zone you’ve got there is basically the center of the strip.”

“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right.”

“Well, we can definitely go talk to all of them once the sun rises,” Emily says, glancing out the window. 

JJ looks at the time. It’s nearly five-thirty and the color of the sky is just beginning to change with the rising sun. She stifles a yawn and stands up. “Anyone want coffee? I’ve seen a few twenty-four hour shops I can get drinks from.”

“Coffee, yes,” Tara says. 

“I’ll go with you,” Spencer says. “I remember how everyone likes their coffee. Except Matt.”

“Two sugars. That’s it,” Matt tells him without looking up from his iPad. 

JJ plays with the keys. Her and Spencer haven’t had any time to talk, just the two of them, and she doesn’t know what she wants to say. Denying him to ride along would only raise more questions from the rest of the team, though, so it’s better to get this over with sooner rather than later. 

The first few minutes of the ride pass in a terse silence, until Spencer asks, “How’re Henry and Michael?”

“Fine, considering their godfather left.” And okay, she hadn’t meant to start with that, but it’s out there now and she can’t take the words back. “Henry is devastated.” She looks over at Spencer. He’s staring down at his hands, one wrapped in a dark blue cast, the other clenched into a tight fist. 

“I-” he starts, and then drags his hand over his face. “I did what I thought was best.” 

“Was it?”

He nods. “I know it is. I couldn’t stay.” 

“So you ran. Like a child.” JJ knows that strikes a nerve with him. He’s confided in her before that he hates when the team treats him like a kid. 

“No,” he bites out. “You don’t understand.”

She parks the car outside a coffee shop, which is still mostly deserted at the early hour. “So explain it to me.”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

“Why? Because I’m not a super genius like you? Because my tiny, normal brain can’t comprehend anything like you? I’m sorry I’m not full of useless knowledge like you.”

“How many times has my useless knowledge solved a case?” he snaps.

“You haven’t been on the team for over a year! Apparently we do just fine without you.”

“Great! I’m glad to hear it. I’ll stay here once the case is solved then.” 

“Fine!” JJ shouts. She watches the barista in the shop go about making a drink, going through the repetitive motions. “I’m so fucking mad at you.” 

“Really?” Spencer laughs humorously. “I couldn’t tell.”

“Does Reina know?” she asks, venom dripping over her name. 

“Does Reina know what?”

“Why you left.”

“What’s your issue with Reina?”

“I don’t have an issue with her. I just think she’s a bad influence on you. You never punched walls before.”

“She’s my _friend_. And I’m an adult. I think I can make decisions about my friends on my own. Besides, Reina has been there for me.”

“Because you wouldn’t let me! You wouldn’t need her if you had just talked to me! Now answer the damn question!”

“No! No, Reina doesn’t know because I haven’t talked to her since you and Luke barged into my apartment. Happy now?” he growls. 

“No. Are you fucking her?”

“JJ, what the _fuck_?”

She grips the steering wheel tighter, avoiding eye contact. “You are, aren’t you?”

“No! I’m not! She’s just a friend. What the fuck is the matter with you?”

She feels hot tears spill over onto her cheeks. “Why wouldn’t you be sleeping with her? You guys are obviously close. She’s attractive. So why aren’t you fucking her?”

“You know why,” he says angrily. 

She looks over at him now. His face is screwed up in pain and there are bags under his eyes. He reaches up and cups her jaw, using his thumb to brush away her tears. His hand is warm and big, an anchor to the world around her. She closes her eyes, a sob escaping. “Why’d you leave?”

“You saw what I did to Cat. I- I liked that,” he tells her and she opens her eyes to watch his face. His eyes are the same hazel with gold around the outside, seeping towards the pupil. His stubble is starting to grow into a thicker beard. He licks his lips and says, “I couldn’t… I didn’t want you guys to realize that what she said was right, that I enjoyed it.”

“Spencer-”

“So I left. I wanted to protect you guys from what I had become.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make, Spencer. We can decide what we can and can’t handle. I’ll always be able to handle you. All of you.”

He laughs, hand jumping where it’s still pressed to her cheek. “Even now?”

“Especially now.”

He leans forward and for a moment, JJ thinks he’s going to kiss her, but instead he wraps his arms around her in a hug, made awkward by the center console. “I’m really sorry,” he says with his face buried on her shoulder. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“Just don’t leave me again. Don’t leave me in the dark,” she pleads. “I need you.” It’s as close to a confession as she’s ever gotten. 

“I won’t,” he promises. “I swear I won’t.”

She wants to ask so much more; if he’ll come back with them and rejoin the team, if he’ll stay in Vegas, what he’s been doing the past year, how he’s been coping with his mom’s death, but all that can wait until later. Right now, she’s going to enjoy just holding him with the worst seemingly behind them.

* * *

Spencer takes a cab back to his apartment around eight in the morning when the others leave to interview their three suspects. Something isn’t sitting right with Spencer. Ian’s name on Garcia’s list surprised him. As much as Ian sometimes annoyed him by disrespecting his personal space, he didn’t seem like a killer. Spencer knows, however, that sometimes it’s the people you least expect. He knows the team will have more information once they interview Diaz, Jameson, and Ian. 

As he climbs the stairs to his floor, he allows himself a small smile. The worst with JJ is over, but that means Spencer now has to rectify things with Reina. Exhaustion settles in his bones despite the coffee he had earlier. He decides to take a shower and have a nap before he talks to her. More time to allow her to cool off wouldn’t be a bad thing. 

He unlocks his apartment door and shuts it behind himself. It feels like weeks ago that he stepped out of the bathroom and saw Luke and JJ sitting on his couch, but it was only two days ago. He sighs and leans against his door. He stares at the pink post-it note he still has taped to his fridge, the one Reina stuck to his door over a year ago. She’s added a few more notes since then. There’s a doodle of a flamingo on one, some flowers on another. One note simply says _te amo_. 

Spencer hasn’t given much thought to what he is going to do once the case is solved. On one hand, he misses his team more than anything and being back with them helping with a case feels right. He is his best, confident self when he’s profiling. But on the other hand, he’s come to love the little life he’s carved out for himself in Las Vegas. He has more time to pursue what he wants. He’s read more books this past year than he has since joining the FBI. It’s less stressful overall. He really doesn’t know what he wants to do. 

He lets out a groan and opts for a shower to give him time to think. His mind wanders over to the things he needs to do before his shift at Westgate tonight, like eat. Talking to Reina before his shift would be ideal. The longer he leaves her alone, the worse it’ll get. He’s giving her time to cool off, but nothing more. 

After his shower, he takes a two hour nap. When he wakes up, he changes into jeans and a t-shirt and then calls his and Reina’s favorite Thai place and orders enough takeout for two. He’s found food is always the best way to get through to Reina. When the food arrives, he carries it down to her apartment and knocks on the door. “Reina? It’s Spencer. I brought some food.”

Silence.

He knocks again. “Reina?”

When there’s still no answer, he frowns. She shouldn’t be at work. She had told him two days ago that she has two days off. She was excited because it was two days in a row. Moving the bags of food to one hand, he pulls out his phone and checks her location. She had started sharing it with him a few months ago when she went out with some girls from her boxing club. Her exact words had been: “If some freak grabs me and tries to hurt me, you’ll know where I am because you’ll have my location!” Spencer hadn’t told her that if she was abducted her attacker would probably make sure she didn’t have her phone. Now, her phone’s location is in their apartment building. 

“Reina, come on. I know you’re in there. I have your location, remember?”

Still nothing. 

With a groan, he sets the food down on the floor and pulls out his keys. She had given him a spare key ages ago for emergencies, but he always felt weird about using it. Now, he slips it into her lock, only to find that her door has been unlocked the whole time. He frowns and pushes the door open. The lights are still on and her TV is playing C-SPAN on mute. Her phone sits on the counter next to two open beers. Something is wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. 

The pieces start to fall together in his head, and before he knows it he’s hyperventilating and calling JJ. 

“Spence? What’s-”

“I think the unsub took Reina,” he rushes out. “I mean- our building is near Westgate and she looks like the other victims. And if he’s accelerating he would get sloppy and stray from his routine and hunt somewhere else. She left her phone in her apartment. She never does that. There are two beers on the counter. Someone was here.” His mind reels. “JJ, Ian took her. Ian Matthews, my coworker. Please, you gotta help me.” 

“Okay, calm down,” she says. ‘We don’t know for sure. Maybe he didn’t take her.”

“JJ-”

“That’s not to say that someone didn’t. Listen, I’ll send some officers to meet you at your building. Tara and Matt will join them. Spencer, calm down. We’ll find her.”

“Please hurry,” he whimpers. “I- The last thing we did was fight.”

“Spencer, hey,” she says, voice soothing. “Don’t start thinking like that. We’ll find her. That’s what we do.” 

“JJ, Ian took her. It has to be. I’ve been-”

“We can talk when you come back to the station, okay? Some officers and Matt and Tara are on their way. They’ll be there soon. Hold tight.”

“JJ?” he breathes, leaning against Reina’s fridge. 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

On the other end of the line, she just says “Of course,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world, as if Spencer hasn’t caused her a year of pain. He ends the call, leans his head back against the fridge, and cries.

* * *

An officer takes Spencer back to the station he had left barely four hours before so he can give another statement. A Las Vegas detective interviews him, and he answers the questions with as much detail as he can. When the interview is over, Spencer steps outside to have a smoke. He fumbles with the packaging, hands shaking. It even takes him a few times to get the lighter to work, but he finally lights his cigarette and takes the first calming inhale. 

When he first started smoking, he coughed like nothing else. He had always heard that it burned and intellectually, that made sense. He’s inhaling smoke, which comes from fire, and fire is hot; but when he took the first puff of a cigarette, it hadn’t burned, so he inhaled a lot. It burned on the exhale, though, and he coughed for five minutes. He was positive he was going to start coughing up blood, but the fit passed and it got easier with each cigarette he smoked. 

Now, the nicotine calms him; it anchors him to the present. The motions are routine and familiar. It’s like a safety blanket. 

He’s smoked halfway down the cigarette when Emily steps up beside him. “Can I bum one?” she asks. 

Spencer hands her his pack and lights one for her once she has it between her lips. “Thought you didn’t like Marlboros,” he says, his own cigarette between his teeth as he puts his pack and lighter back in his pocket.

Emily coughs as she breathes out, face scrunching up. “I prefer Mavericks, but I’m not that picky.” She hacks out a few more coughs. “God, I haven’t smoked since I was nineteen.”

“Reina was the one who suggested I start smoking,” Spencer tells her. “I told her about the dilaudid and how I was itching for a fix. She told me to try cigarettes. They’re not healthy, but you can’t really OD on nicotine, not through smoking at least. A smoker only inhales about one to two milligrams of nicotine per cigarette, and only zero point zero-three milligrams of that is absorbed into the bloodstream. It takes about fifty to sixty milligrams to overdose, and even then it’s unlikely you’ll die from it. The only reason James Heathridge’s victims died from it was because the nicotine was in a pesticide. That’s the most common way to die from nicotine poisoning these days. Had his victims gotten treatment for the poisoning, they would have lived, just like his sister Lara did.”

“James Heathridge? He was the guy who thought it was his mission to kill all the devil’s wives,” Emily says. “You remember every case you’ve worked, don’t you?”

“All three hundred and four of them,” he says, crushing the end of his cigarette out. “Three hundred and five now, I guess.” 

“Forensics is already running the DNA on the beer bottles to see if they match the semen we found on Kendall. They’re also checking for Rohypnol in the beer. Based on what we have so far, we can’t say for sure she was taken by our unsub, but it does seem like it. She fits the victimology.” 

“It’s Ian Matthews. He’s the unsub. What did you find at his house? Why haven’t you arrested him?” Spencer asks. 

“Nothing. He lives with his brother and the profile doesn’t fit for two people, so he can’t keep the victims there. We searched his house and found nothing. No trophies or anything. What makes you so sure it’s him?”

“He fits the profile. And I- I _saw_ him. He was following Daisy.”

“You said you didn’t see that guy’s face.”

“I didn’t! But his walk… He walked with a limp. Ian has a limp.”

“Lots of people walk with limps, Reid.”

“It’s not a coincidence! Did you at least get a DNA sample from him? What about his alibis?”

Emily sighs and drops her cigarette in an ash urn. “He wouldn’t give a DNA sample without a warrant, and Garcia is checking out his alibis now. We’ll know soon.” 

“That’s basically an admission to guilt, refusing to give a DNA sample! At least tell me you have officers watching him!” 

She looks at him. “Spencer, believe it or not, we know what we’re doing. We have an undercover officer posted outside all their houses. We’re looking into all of them. We will find Reina.”

“And I am _telling_ you that it’s Ian! You need to bring him in!”

“Spencer. We are doing everything we can right now.”

“It’s not enough!” he shouts. He tugs at his hair, some strands coming off between his fingers. 

“Reid,” Emily snaps. “I know you’re worried about Reina. But shouting at me over things I can’t control isn’t going to solve anything.” 

“Did you guys even search his house thoroughly? Maybe there was something you missed.”

“Take a walk. _Now_ ,” Emily orders. “You need to calm down. Come back inside when you can think clearly again.”

“I am thinking clearly! You guys aren’t-”

“Reid! We can’t do anything more without a warrant. Garcia is checking his alibis. You know if we do anything against Ian’s rights or against the law, the case against him could fall apart. We _will_ get this guy.”

“Fine,” Spencer growls. “I’ll take a fucking walk.” He storms away from Emily and knows he’s acting like a child. But he’s angry and he _knows_ Ian has Reina. It all makes sense. He knows where Spencer lives because Ian gave him a ride home in his red car after work one night when it was pouring down rain. And he knows Reina lives in the same building because Spencer told him. All Ian had to do to find Reina’s apartment was look at the resident mailboxes. Their names and apartment numbers are on the outside of the mailboxes. Reina fits the type. Even her name is similar to Ian’s ex’s name. The team had to have missed something. 

“His fucking _notebook_ ,” he says to himself, the thought landing solidly in the front of his mind. Before he knows it, he’s hailing a cab and telling the cabbie to take him to Westgate. The ride seems to take hours, but in reality the police station is only fifteen minutes away from the casino. He tosses some cash at the driver and jumps out of the car. He races around to the employee entrance and skids inside the locker room. 

Desiree and Oliver look up from their phones when he darts in. “Vincent?” Desiree says. “Your shift isn’t until eight. What’re you doing?”

He ignores her and goes straight to Ian’s locker. If his notebook wasn’t at his house, it has to be in his locker. He stares at the combination lock. It takes three numbers and at least two numbers can be repeated meaning there are at least six hundred and forty-eight possible combinations. He slams his left hand against the locker. 

“Vincent! What’s going on?” Oliver asks.

“Ian’s locker! I need to get into it,” he says. 

“What for?” 

“Does it matter?” he snaps.

“Yeah,” Desiree tells him. “You’re trying to break into his locker!”

Spencer closes his eyes and thinks. He’s seen Ian open his locker before, has watched him put the combination in. He just needs to think. And then- “37-12-89.” He puts in the combination and the lock springs open. He wrenches the door open and grabs Ian’s notebook. 

“Vincent!” Desiree yells. 

“What?” he growls, already reading through Ian’s notebook. His heart stops. Ian’s the unsub. The notebook describes every abduction, murder, and rape in disgusting and gory details. The more he reads, the sicker he feels. Any of the things Ian is describing could be happening to Reina right now. 

“Vincent, your face,” Oliver whispers.

Spencer flips to the back of the notebook. One page is dated from two days ago. His heart plummets. Ian describes finding Reina and getting into her apartment. He writes about drugging her and getting her out to his car, about taking her to a house. Spencer reads further, hoping there will be some hint about where Ian took her. He mentions a room with open scaffolding from which he’s rigged up some ropes to hold the women in a certain position. Spencer feels like he’s going to be sick. Ian mentions something else, tarps covering open window frames. He slams the notebook shut. Emily said Ian lives with his brother… 

“Vincent, dude, I think you need to sit down,” Desiree urges. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

“Don’t touch me.” He grabs his phone from his pocket and starts heading back out of the casino. He dials Garcia’s number by memory. 

“I was getting-” 

“Garcia,” he interrupts, “what does Ian Matthews’ brother do?”

“Spencer? Um, lemme check.” He listens to her clack away on her computer. “He’s a construction worker. Why?”

Spencer hails a cab. “Did he work on any sites where construction was paused or shut down?”

“It looks like there was a subdivision he was working on before all projects got canceled. The housing company ran out of money.”

“Send me that address.”

“Spencer? What’s going on?”

“Garcia,” he barks. “Address.”

“Okay, okay. Sent. Should I-”

“I’ll tell the team,” he lies and hangs up. He directs the cabbie to his apartment building, and tells him to wait. He runs up the stairs two at a time and bursts into his apartment. He grabs his gun from his night stand and leaves his phone. He races back down to the waiting cab and rattles off the address Garcia gave him. It takes twenty minutes to get out to the unfinished subdivision. There are a few houses, all under construction. He hands the cabbie some money and then starts racing to the house furthest from the entrance to the neighborhood. 

Spencer slows down as he approaches the house and pulls out his gun. On the second floor of the house, he can see soft yellow light spilling out the window. He hears a scream, loud and piercing in the afternoon. He thumbs off the safety on his gun and goes into the house. The first floor is vacant, composed of unfinished rooms. He clears the floor and then takes the rickety stairs to the second floor. The plywood creaks under his weight, but he keeps moving. 

He clears each room, before stopping outside the last one. He can hear quiet crying and the sound of metal against shalestone. He raises his gun, and bursts into the room. 

Reina is hanging from the ceiling in a sex swing. Her wrists have been tied to the chains holding the swing to the rafters. Her legs are spread wide in the stirrups and there’s blood on her inner thighs. She’s sweating and pale, and her eyes are dull. She’s been drugged recently. Her body is covered in cuts and bruises and dried blood is matted in her hair. When she sees Spencer, shame and relief crosses her face slowly like syrup, but both are soon replaced by fear. Spencer looks behind her and sees Ian with a knife. He moves quickly to press it to Reina’s neck. She whimpers. 

“How nice of you to join us,” Ian purrs, grinning at Spencer. “We’ve been waiting.” 

“Have you now?” Spencer retorts and keeps his gun trained on Ian. 

“Yeah. I knew you would find me eventually. Reina told me all about who you really are over drinks. Isn’t that right, sweetie?”

“Vincent-”

“Ah, ah,” Ian interrupts. “That’s not your name now is it, Dr. Reid?”

“What do you want?” Spencer says evenly. “Tell me why I shouldn’t just shoot you right now.” 

“You move a single muscle, I slit her throat,” he threatens. To prove his point, he presses the knife harder against Reina’s throat, causing a drop of blood to bead up on her skin. She whines. 

“What do you want?”

“You need to leave, Dr. Reid. None of this concerns you. You shouldn’t even be here. You’re not an agent anymore. You’re an ex-con.”

“My name was cleared. If you had done proper research you would know that.” Spencer looks at Reina, trying to communicate with his eyes that everything will be okay. “How do you know my name?”

“Well, after our shift last night, and everything you told me about your best friend here… I decided she was perfect. After all, Daisy died too soon. Her heart couldn’t take the stress, I think. She was weak. Reina here-” He grabs her by the hair, tilting her head back more, “-she’s strong. I _like_ her. All I had to do was knock on her door. She was already drunk, and had been drinking for quite some time. She was more than willing to tell me everything about how her best friend lied to her. I only had to look up a few things to find out who you really are.”

“She’s not Rebecca, Ian. She never hurt you,” Spencer says. 

“Don’t!” Ian barks. “Don’t do your weird psych thing on me. It won’t work.”

“Reina never hurt you.” 

“I’m sure she’s hurt other guys. All women are the same, Dr. Reid. They don’t give a fuck about any guy’s feelings. Do you know what my ex did to me? She _left_ me. All because I smacked her around a bit.” Ian laughs bitterly. “I gave Rebecca everything. I wasted seven years of my life on her, and she left. All because she was too weak to be with a real man!”

“She left because you hit her. A real man doesn’t hit women.”

“You don’t know shit about being a real man! You couldn’t even save your mother,” he spits. “Yeah, I read about that in the D.C. papers. Diana Reid, paranoid schizophrenic with Alzheimer’s to boot, blown to bits because her poor excuse of a son was locked away in prison for murder.”

Spencer tightens his grip on his gun. The cast prevents him from holding it correctly. He clenches his jaw. “You’re sick, Ian.”

“Sick? Ha! I’m the only one who gets it. Don’t you see? Women want to be treated like this, but they will never admit to it. I’m doing them a favor. Rebecca couldn’t admit to it, and now she’s marrying some pansy instead of me!”

There’s the trigger. Rebecca got engaged. Spencer shifts his weight.

“I said don’t move!” Ian shouts. 

“I wasn’t,” Spencer says. He has to think quick or Reina won’t make it out alive. Play to his delusions. “You’re right.”

“What?” 

“I said, you’re right.” He lowers his gun. “Reina hurt me. I’ve been in love with her this entire year, and she just ignored me. I’ve been trying to fuck her for so long, and she just brushes me off.” Reina stares at him. Despite the drugs slowing her cognitive function, she looks confused. “You’re wrong about one thing, though.”

“Oh, yeah? What about?” Ian snorts. 

“I didn’t come here to save her.” Reina’s eyes go wide. He hates to see the fear in her eyes, the realization dawning on her slowly. “I came here to join you. Once I figured out what you were doing and that you had her, I had to find you. Just so I could have a taste.” 

“You want to join?” he says slowly. 

“If she won’t give me what I want, I’ll have to take it.”

Ian grins, slow and wide. “I guess you are a real man after all, Dr. Reid.” He lowers the knife from Reina’s neck and steps away. “I gotta admit, this is a bit of a surprise to me.” He turns his back on Spencer, and Spencer lunges. 

He hits Ian over the back of his head with his cast, and Ian drops the knife. It clatters across the plywood floor and slides underneath the swing Reina is in. Ian whips around, eyes ablaze in anger, and Spencer swings his hand again. Ian dodges it and tackles Spencer. They both go sprawling on the ground. Ian lands on top of Spencer and hits him in the jaw. His teeth clack together, and pain shoots through his mouth. He has to have cracked a tooth. Spencer manages to push Ian off of him and then kicks him in the stomach. His breath leaves in a whoosh and Spencer swings against with his cast. He hits him over the temple. Ian stumbles backwards. He lunges at Spencer again, but he sidesteps him and Spencer uses his momentum to throw Ian to the ground. He lands on his stomach, and Spencer is quick to drop his knee to the center of his back and twist his arms behind him. He has him pinned. 

Panting, Spencer looks up when he hears footsteps, and then his team enters the room, guns sweeping the area. “Thank god you guys found me,” Spencer breathes, and gets off Ian when Matt comes over with handcuffs. 

“Medics are on their way,” Emily says as Spencer rushes over to Reina. 

He starts untying the ropes around her wrists, and then releasing her feet from the stirrups. The paramedics crowd in with a gurney just as he’s helping her down from the swing. Spencer grabs a blanket from them and wraps it around Reina, covering her naked body. 

“Vincent?” she slurs, eyes glazed over. 

Spencer wraps an arm around her waist, mindful of her cuts and bruises, and guides her over to the gurney. “Reina, you’re safe now. I’ve got you. It’s over.”

“It’s over?” she mumbles, head lolling onto his shoulder. 

“Yeah, it’s over. I’ve got you. I’m not leaving you.” He helps her up onto the gurney. “I’m right here.”

She fists a hand into his shirt, grip tight despite her addled state. “Don’t leave me, please. Please, don’t leave me.”

“I won’t, Reina, I won’t, I promise. I’m gonna be with you the whole time. I won’t leave you.” He helps the paramedics buckle her to the stretcher. “We’re gonna get you to a hospital, you’re gonna be just fine.”

She nods, eyes falling shut, and Spencer turns to his team. JJ catches his eye and nods once. “Go.”

He follows the paramedics down the stairs and to the ambulance, holding Reina’s hand the entire way to the hospital. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last and final chapter will hopefully be posted on June 3, 2020. As always, you can find me on twitter [@switchbucky](https://twitter.com/switchbucky) and tumblr [@expecto-weasleys](https://expecto-weasleys.tumblr.com/). Thank you so much for reading!


	3. UPDATE - BLM

_“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”_ -Desmond Tutu

* * *

Due to current events as of June 2, 2020, I will not be posting the last and final chapter of this fic on June third as I stated in the notes at the end of the second chapter. I do not know when it will be posted. In the mean time, click this [link](https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/) for more information on what you can do to help. 

You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/switchbucky), where I have been posting about current events as well as my own arrest, and [tumblr](https://expecto-weasleys.tumblr.com/), where I have not been as active. Stay safe, and speak out. 


	4. execution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spencer and Reina must deal with the aftermath of her abduction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many thanks to my beta [redbullandcupcakebatter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbullandcupcakebatter/profile). 
> 
> Although I am finally posting this chapter, the protests surrounding the BLM movement are not over. This is not a moment. It's a movement. Keep donating, keep signing petitions, and keep going to protests if you can. Remember, all cops are bastards. Yes, even the BAU team. They're bastards.
> 
> Remember: Black lives matter. They will always matter and have always mattered. Stand up and fight for what is right.

_There is no mile as long as the one that leads back home. -Katherin Marsh_

* * *

Reina shakes her head. “No, Spencer, absolutely not.”

“Reina, I read his journal. I already know- I have a good idea of what happened. I don’t want you to do this alone, not when you don’t have to,” Spencer tells her. 

The heart monitor on Reina’s finger tells him that her heart rate is steady. The IV drips a small amount of morphine for her pain, and her half-finished lunch is pushed aside on the bedside tray. Reina’s arms are covered in bandages, and where there aren’t bandages, there are yellow and green bruises. Some of her cuts had required stitches and Spencer has swatted her hands away from them several times, reminding her not to scratch. He’s been her only visitor, and the only time he’s left has been to go to the vending machine down the hall for food. The nurses have started bringing him coffee on shift changes, and JJ dropped off a few of his books from his apartment before the team had to head back to Quantico. 

“You don’t have to do it alone,” he says softly. “I know how hard it can be to relive these kinds of experiences. The detectives are going to ask for as much detail as you can give. It’ll help build a stronger case.”

“I’ll think about it,” Reina says. “I don’t want you to have to think about me like… that.”

“If you don’t let me go with you, will you at least consider having a women’s advocate sit with you? The hospital is already working on assigning you one. They could help.”

“Yes. If I don’t let you in, I’ll let the advocate in. Can we stop talking about it now? Let me draw on your cast again.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Spencer mumbles, and grabs the sharpie from his satchel. He’s been letting Reina doodle on his cast whenever she wants. It helps her calm down when things get too much. She takes the sharpie eagerly and starts drawing what looks like a dog. He can’t tell. “How’s your pain?”

“Manageable.” The marker scrapes across his cast. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“What I’m doing?”

“Are you staying here or going back?” she asks. She looks up at him. Even with the concoction of drugs pumping through her veins, her eyes are clear and piercing.

“That doesn’t matter right now. I’m here with you,” he hedges. 

“Don’t be cute,” she chastises, rolling her eyes. “You’ve made it clear you’re not leaving my side until I’m good to go home. I mean after I get out of here. What’re you doing?”

“I… honestly don’t know.”

“What?”

She caps the sharpie. “You should go back. You miss them.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” he jokes, but it doesn’t land.

“Spencer,” she says quietly. “I’ve been thinking about moving back to Eagle’s Pass.”

“Why?”

“I miss my brothers. They’re all I’ve got left. And maybe the three of us could move somewhere else. The east coast, maybe,” she says, eyes glittering. “I may have a friend there in the near future.”

“But-”

“I can’t stay here, after what happened. I need another fresh start. Once I’m released from here and that psycho’s trial is over, I’m going back to Texas. I’m pretty sure my brothers have been wanting to leave Eagle’s Pass for a while now. I’ll give them the push they need.” She lays her head back down on her pillow and closes her eyes. “The three of us can open an auto shop in-” She stops. “Where’d you live before?”

“D.C.”

“We’ll open an auto shop in D.C. We’ll get far away from the cartel and from this shitty city. A new start. It’ll be nice.” She looks back at Spencer, jaw set and stubborn. “And you’ll be there. Back with your team. We’ll get Thai on weekends. I’m sure you know lots of good places.”

Spencer grins. “I do.” 

“And when my brothers start to annoy me, because living with them is hell, I’ll go to your place.”

“What if I’m away on a case?”

“I’ll have a key, naturally. I can keep your houseplants alive. And I’ll rearrange your bookshelves to annoy you.”

“I hate when you do that,” he mutters.

“I know,” Reina says, smiling wide. It’s the first time Spencer has seen her smile since coming to the hospital. He’s apologized several times for lying to her, and each time she’s waved him off, telling him he’s forgiven because he saved her life. She’s told him she’ll want an explanation in the future, but not right now. Right now she wants to get better. 

“It sounds perfect.”

“It _will_ be perfect,” she asserts. “You should go home and shower. Change your clothes. And bring me some actual food, not this stupid hospital food.”

“Are you sure? I don’t wanna leave you.”

“Spencer, I’ve already been here two days, and you haven’t left. At least I’ve gotten a sponge bath and a new gown. I bet your underwear fucking reeks. Get out of here. I promise I’ll be okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m about to beat you with this IV stand, on god.”

Spencer stands up, knees protesting. “Okay. You’ll call me if you need anything?”

“Yes. And hey, get my keys from my apartment. You can drive my car back here when you’re done.”

“I don’t know that you’ll want me driving your car.”

She makes a face. “Spencer, I’m a mechanic. If you manage to fuck it up, I can fix it.”

He smiles. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Take a nap in your own bed! If you’re back here in less than two hours I’m telling the nurses you’re not allowed in my room anymore!” she shouts after him.

When he gets in the elevator, the exhaustion hits him like a truck. He hasn’t gotten much sleep over the past few days, just quick naps whenever Reina was asleep, and he always jerked away at every sound she made and every time a nurse came in to check her vitals. 

The team had left shortly after the arrest was made. Spencer hadn’t gone with them. They stayed long enough to watch him give his statement to the police, and then JJ drove him back to the hospital to be with Reina. Spencer knew that despite his interference, the case would be pretty cut and dry. Ian’s alibis had fallen apart the more Gracia looked into them, and his DNA matched the semen found on Kendal Watson and the beer bottle in Reina’s apartment. His notebook was pretty incriminating evidence as well. Ian Matthews would be looking at a very long prison stay.

JJ has been texting Spencer, asking for updates on Reina and to see how he is doing. He sighs, and once the elevator doors open up on the first floor, he pulls out his phone and calls her. “Hey, Spence,” she greets, and his heart constricts. It’s been so long since he’s been able to just call her and talk, and the familiar greeting makes him ache for home. 

“Hey, Jayje. What’s up?”

“We surprisingly don’t have a case, so I’ve got some time off to spend with the boys. How’re you doing?”

“Reina is forcing me to go home and shower.”

“Good. I was starting to worry.”

“And… I’m thinking of moving back to D.C.”

“Really?” He can hear her fighting back the excitement bubbling up inside her, and he smiles. 

“Yeah, uh, Reina thinks it’d be good, and she doesn’t plan on staying in Vegas once Ian’s trial is over. I’ve kind of blown my cover here, anyway. I think it’s time I go back.”

“The boys will be glad to hear it,” JJ says.

“And you?” Spencer asks, standing outside the hospital, sun warm on his face. 

“I’m glad to hear it, too,” she whispers. 

“I’ll, um- I’ll call you with updates on the trial and stuff. It’ll probably be a few weeks, but-”

“Take all the time you need. You’ve got a place waiting for you.”

“JJ, I can’t stay with you and the boys. That’s too much.”

“Actually… Rossi has sort of been paying your rent for your old apartment this whole time.”

He chokes on his spit. “ _What_?”

“Yeah. We all figured—or hoped, really—that’d you be back, so Rossi just kind of… kept paying your rent. He hasn’t been paying utilities or anything like that, but yeah. Your place is the same as you left it.”

“Thank you,” he breathes. 

“Don’t thank me; thank Rossi.” She pauses. “Do you wanna talk to Henry?”

“Yes,” Spencer says, “yes, please.”

He hears JJ call for Henry. There’s some scuffle on the other end, and then Henry says gruffly, “Hello?” Spencer can tell he’s not in any mood to be on the phone.

“Hey, Henry,” he greets, and his voice sounds rough.

“Uncle Spencer?” Henry asks hopefully.

Spencer leans against a wall. His fingers twitch for a cigarette. “Yeah, buddy, it’s me.”

“Where did you go?” he says. “Mom said- Mom said you were gone, but didn’t know where.”

“I… I went back home. To Las Vegas. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I really- I really should have,” he tells him. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

“It’s okay. Mom said things would be okay, and she’s always right. She told me you were sad. Did going to Las Vegas help?”

“Yeah, buddy. It did. It helped a lot. Distance- Distance can help with these kinds of things.”

“Is it like when I get really mad at Michael and Mom has me take a walk to calm down?” he asks. 

“Yeah, Henry, it’s exactly like that. Except my walk was really long.”

“Thirteen months and nineteen days. I counted.”

Spencer closes his eyes. “Henry, I’m really, really sorry, but I’ll be back soon.”

“You will?”

“Yeah, bud, I’m coming back.”

“I’ve been practicing magic, you know. I found this guy on YouTube. I learned a lotta cool tricks from him. Can I show them to you?”

He smiles. “You can put on a whole show for me when I get back, Henry.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. And we’ll have a boys’ day. How does that sound? I’ll take you wherever you like and you can tell me everything that I missed,” he says. “I wanna know everything.”

“When will you be back?” Henry asks. 

“Soon. A few weeks. You can call me whenever you want. I’ll try to answer every time.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, Henry. I have to go now. I’ll talk to you. I promise.”

“Alright, Uncle Spencer. I love you.”

Spencer’s throat closes up. “I love you, too, buddy. Can you put your mom back on?”

JJ’s voice is quiet when she says, “You just made his whole day, Spence.”

“I meant what I told him. Every word.” 

“Good. You have a lot of time to make up for. Michael only knows you from pictures now.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Kids forgive easily.”

“And you?” he asks, heart in his throat. 

“I do, too, when it comes to you.” The silence stretches, but it’s not uncomfortable. It holds everything they want to say to each other, but can’t. “Come home soon.”

“I will,” Spencer says. “I will.”

* * *

Spencer grips the strap on his satchel as he waits for his luggage to make its slow crawl over to him on the baggage claim conveyor belt. Dulles airport smells like static and old socks, but the ground already feels like home. Reina is in Texas with her brothers. She’s been there for a week already and has been texting Spencer with updates. She’s told him she’s already convinced Isaac to move to D.C., and she’s making quick progress with Xavier. Once she gives Spencer the greenlight, he’s going to start looking at apartments for them.

Ian’s trial passed quickly. Overwhelming evidence gave the prosecution an unbreakable case. He was given twenty-five to life, without the possibility of parole. Reina did great on the stand and gave a moving testimony which brought Spencer and a few jurors to tears. Ian had just grinned through the whole thing. Spencer has never wanted to shoot someone more. As soon as the verdict was delivered and Ian was hauled away in handcuffs, Reina launched herself at Spencer, and they held each other for a long time in the courtroom. The worst was over, and Reina could focus on her recovery. 

She had started seeing a therapist once a week and was on medication to treat her anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Spencer had stayed in her apartment with her the first couple of weeks during the trial and calmed her down when she had night terrors. He stayed up with her when insomnia hit hard and cooked her meals when she refused to eat or even get out of bed. She is determined to get better, though, and over the phone she already seems happier now that she is out of Vegas. 

Spencer’s luggage rolls by him, and he grabs it off the conveyor belt and heads towards the exit. He knows JJ and Garcia are going to be waiting for him. Garcia has definitely made a big, glittery sign welcoming him home, and he knows without a doubt there’s going to a party at Rossi’s house to celebrate his return. He smiles despite himself. It feels good to be home. 

Spencer decided not to rejoin the team. They had all been disappointed when he told the team that, but they understood. He’s willing to consult with them on cases, but he doesn’t want to work with the BAU full time. His time with the FBI has reached its end. Georgetown has already offered him a position teaching criminal psychology to undergrad and grad students, and he accepted gratefully. 

As he turns the corner from baggage claim and sees JJ and Garcia with her hot pink poster and green lettering, Spencer knows he’s where he belongs.

* * *

The cemetery is quiet, and Diana Reid’s grave is a little overgrown, the headstone covered by long grass. Spencer sits right in front of it, legs crossed. He brushes the grass away and runs his fingers over his mom’s name. “Hey, Mom,” he whispers. “It’s been a long time.”

In a tree nearby, a bird lets out a long squawk before taking flight. A motorcycle speeds down a side street, engine popping. Spencer hunches forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” he tells his mom, eyes pricking with tears. “I did everything I could, but it wasn’t enough. I wish things had turned out differently.”

He looks away, blinking fast to dispel the tears. The sun ducks behind some clouds, casting a long shadow over the cemetery. 

“JJ and I talked about imagined futures the other day. Like, different timelines we could be living in. I told her about some of mine. I didn’t tell her that in some, we’ve got a family of our own.” He pulls grass out of the ground and lets the wind carry it away. “I know I can’t sit around and wait for a future with JJ. I’ll watch my life go by if I do that. I can’t change the past, just like I can’t bring you back.”

The sun comes back out, and Spencer blinks against the sudden brightness.

“I can’t spend my time wishing things had gone differently. I had thirty-five wonderful years with you. I’m not going to let my own failures ruin the memories I have with you. You wouldn’t want that, and I don’t want that. I spent some time back home, in Las Vegas. I did something I’ve never done before: I went without a plan. I made it up as I went. And it… It turned out okay, Mom.”

Spencer thinks of Reina and her brothers, settling into a new apartment not far from his own. Apparently Xavier was already able to find a good place to start their auto shop, and Tara, Rossi, and Garcia have already pledged their loyalty to them after they saw the work Reina and her brothers did on Rossi’s car after someone dinged it in a parking lot. Reina and Spencer see different counselors in the same office and go to their appointments together. They always get lunch together after. Sometimes JJ or Isaac joins them. Sometimes it's Garcia or Xavier. Other times it’s a weird combination of everyone, and sometimes it’s just Spencer and Reina, like it was in Vegas. 

On weekends when JJ is on a case and Will has work, Spencer takes Henry and Michael out for the day. They go to science museums or to the park. Spencer teaches Henry how to play chess, and Michael enjoys throwing a softball with him, even if neither of them are very good. Spencer helps Henry with his homework. He likes explaining things to his godson, who seems to enjoy learning as much as Spencer does. Michael likes drawing, and he gives Spencer at least three pictures every time he sees him. Spencer keeps them all in a folder in his desk back home and has his favorites framed.

Once a month, the team gets together at someone’s house or apartment and they all share drinks, although Spencer prefers to stick to water. (He still has a cigarette every now and again, when he’s feeling especially anxious.) They play stupid card games, and sometimes Spencer deals for them, falling into the easy routine he once had. He catches Tara and Matt trying to cheat in poker; sometimes he lets them get away with it just to annoy Rossi.

Spencer goes to bookstores alone. He buys a cup of coffee from a corner stand and then browses the shelves for hours. He selects a stack of books and then sits in one of the loveseats in the corner of the store, books piled at his feet and coffee cooling on the side table. Sometimes he buys books, and sometimes he doesn’t. His books start spilling off his bookshelves, but Reina lets him store some of them in her apartment. Isaac and Xavier tease him, but buy him comic books that he enjoys. He gets them video games in return and they teach him how to play. His family grows. 

His lectures at Georgetown go well, and his classes are always packed. He teaches what he knows. He builds rapport with his students, and he keeps an eye out for kids that seem to be on the outside of their peer groups. He knows what that’s like. His office hours are always busy, and more often than not he just has them in his lecture hall. Students are welcome to just work on homework in the quiet for a little bit, or ask him questions about anything. Some kids approach him about working in the FBI, and he answers each question patiently. Spencer gets high ratings on Rate My Professor, and Reina laughs so hard she pees when she sees the chili pepper next to his name. He’s still not sure what it means. 

Spencer leans back on his hands, face turned up to the mid-day sun. He’s reminded of the times his mom would take him to the park and push him on the swing. He’d beg her to push him higher, until he could lean back in the swing and feel like the world was tipping upside down, but his mom would be there to catch him if he fell. His phone buzzes in his pocket, a reminder of the lunch date he has set with Reina. 

He looks down at his mom’s headstone, glimmering in the sun. He presses his hand to the warm stone. Spencer stands up, brushes off his jeans, and walks to his car. Slowly, he’s starting to rebuild. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/switchbucky) and [tumblr](https://expecto-weasleys.tumblr.com/).


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